Dear Daughter,

After my last letter, I want to write to you about marriage. But not all at once – because a marriage isn’t one thing. It changes shape as the years pass, and so I’ll write it in parts, the way it actually unfolds.

This first one is about the beginning. The colourful years.

You find your person. You decide to take the plunge. And the first thing nobody quite prepares you for is this: you now share your personal space with another human being, completely and permanently.

It sounds simple. It isn’t.

Even people who have known each other for years find it quietly, unexpectedly hard. Because personal space isn’t just physical – it is the invisible architecture of your habits, your rhythms, your way of being alone in a room. I still laugh about this: your father used to keep his belt, his wallet, his little everyday things on one side of the bed, the way he had for years. When we got married and I moved to this side of the room, those things suddenly needed a new place. For a few days, he kept on returning to other side of the bed and then realising that he has to go to cupboard to fetch them. This small disruption in a routine I hadn’t even noticed he had. A tiny thing. But so many early frictions are born from exactly these tiny things.

What I want you to remember is this: when you enter someone’s home – or even when the two of you build a new one together – not everything needs to change overnight. If there are people around who have lived a certain way for years, don’t walk in trying to rearrange everything. Not the furniture, not the habits, not the rhythms. Some disruptions are necessary; many are not. Pick them wisely.

And here is something I didn’t fully understand when I was young, and something I want you to hold close.

When you marry someone, you don’t just marry them. You marry a family.

And that family will have its own ways of speaking, of celebrating, of being hurt, of showing love. Some of it will feel familiar. Some of it will feel foreign. And in the beginning – maybe for a long while – it can feel like you are a guest in someone else’s home, trying to decode a language you were never taught.

Don’t let it harden into distance.

Make the effort to truly know the people on his side. Sit with his mother even when the conversation is slow. Remember the things his father cares about. Learn the names of cousins and the stories behind old photographs. Not because you are performing the role of a good daughter-in-law, but because these are the people who shaped the person you chose. To understand them is to understand him more.

And give it time. People – especially those who have loved someone for decades – can feel insecure when someone new enters the picture. They may hold back. They may misread you. They may see everything through the lens of what they fear losing. That is not malice; it is love expressed imperfectly. Don’t take it personally in those early months. Keep showing up with warmth. Keep being consistent. Trust builds slowly, and it builds from the small things – a phone call without reason, a remembered preference, a moment of genuine interest.

At the same time, your own family does not disappear from the picture. Your parents, your siblings – keep those ties alive too. The relationships on both sides matter, and a good marriage doesn’t make you choose.

These early years – the colourful years, roughly twenty-five to thirty-five – go by faster than you can imagine. One moment you are newly married, and the next you look up and years have passed, and you can barely say where. They disappear into long dinners and late movies, into trips booked on a whim and that easy, intoxicating feeling of we have all the time in the world.

Everything is bright and light. Enjoy every bit of it. Truly.

But here is what I need you to know: these breezy, beautiful years are exactly when the biggest, quietest decisions of your whole life get made. Where you will live. Whose career leads when. Whether to move, and for whom. When to have children, or whether to at all.

It feels like you are only eating and travelling and laughing. But underneath, the foundation of everything that comes later is being poured. So enjoy the colour, yes – but be aware to what you are deciding inside it.

The biggest early decision is almost always about place.

Someone’s work calls them to another city. Or an opportunity arrives – for you or for him – somewhere neither of you expected. And suddenly the question of home becomes the question of us.

I have seen people hold back from real opportunities because they didn’t want to leave their city, their comfort, their familiar street. And I understand that. But be honest about what the resistance really is. It is rarely the career. It is more often the discomfort of newness – the anxiety of a city you don’t know, the routine you’d have to rebuild, the identity you’d lose if you weren’t in the place where everyone already knows who you are.

These colourful years are the one real window to see more of the world. More cities, more versions of yourself. Once children come and you settle, that kind of movement becomes genuinely hard. So if a real opportunity arrives – for either of you – don’t let the walls of a particular house be the deciding factor.

In your generation, both of you have an equal say. That is not a softer arrangement; it is a stronger one. The women who have built remarkable careers – look behind them, and you will often find a partner who stepped back, moved cities, picked up the slack at home and said: go. And the same is true in reverse. Those marriages worked because two emotionally mature people kept asking the same question: what is best for us, as a team?

Because the moment you marry, it stops being only about you. And that is not a loss. It is the whole point.

And then there are decisions that belong only to the two of you. When to have children. Whether to have them at all. How many.

I will say only this: do not let anyone else answer those questions for you. Not family, however well-meaning. Not friends, however loud. Not the timeline society seems to have decided on your behalf. These are among the most profound choices a person makes, and they should come from within your marriage, not from the pressure around it.

Talk to each other honestly – not once, but often. These are not conversations you have and close; they are ones you return to as you learn more about yourselves and each other.

Some people will assume. Some will ask. Some will push. You are allowed to smile, and say nothing.

So here is what I want you to carry from this first letter.

Share your space generously, and be patient about what takes time to share. Build real relationships with the people on his side – not a performance of relationship, but an actual one. Make decisions about place, and career, and children as a team – with equal weight on both sides, and with the question is this good for us at the centre of everything.

The colourful years are meant to be lived lightly on the surface, and wisely underneath.

More soon. The mundane years are next – and they are more beautiful than they sound.

With all my heart,

Mumma