Navid Mohammadzadeh & Fereshteh Hosseini on a red carpet in the capital

Not every day will be perfect, or even good, and that has to be okay. Talk about the imperfections and the pain points. Don’t beat yourselves up. The old adage says marriage is a marathon, not a sprint. And some days will feel like an obstacle course where you have to carry your spouse up a mountain and through a pit of mud. Obsessing over whether you have a strong marriage or whether you’re doing everything “right” are great ways to set yourself up for failure. I heard this over and over from tribeswomen in Kenya and Tanzania, who said they heeded the advice from older women — their marriage mentors — to accept that they wouldn’t learn everything about how to be a wife in a day. It’s a process.

February 4, 2022 | 6:29 pm