This is not a love letter to my groom-to-be per se (sorry to disappoint), but I write this mainly as a reminder to you—my future, overthinking, ever-anxious self—of why. Of what went on in your head when you made this call. Because it’s one thing to love someone, but a whole other level to commit to a marriage. I know us too well to guarantee that you’re going to have doubts and second-guess your own decision (perhaps because we did it once, and now we’re a lot more risk-averse). So let me tell you this—your expansive brain would again run around to different corners, dark and light, playing and replaying scenarios of the best and the worst things that could happen, but in the end, you’d come to the same conclusion: that it only makes sense to be with him. No matter how many times we do this.

(Unless of course you’re presented with new data points that fundamentally changes the outcome, we’re too Bayesian to ignore that.)

So here are five reasons why—hold on to them whenever that fear comes to visit:

1. You were both whole before you met each other. He wasn’t looking for someone to fix his life, and neither were you. You and he are only doing this because you both genuinely believe that being together makes it possible for you to go farther than you would on your own (even though that would’ve probably been fine, too). You weren’t under any pressure to get married and therefore could walk away at any time in the relationship, yet you both choose to be together and for the right reasons.
   
2. You’re fundamentally compatible. Things that other people find difficult about the two of you are what you enjoy about each other. Your shared ‘logic base’ a.k.a. the ‘container’, makes it not only easy but also rewarding for you to think things through, even when the ‘content’ a.k.a. our interests in life tend to vary. On Day 5, he made an excel sheet to score himself against your random list of 60+ criteria you want from a partner and passed with flying colors. (Not to mention all the scary similarities we share—down to Di Pematang and Anugerah yang Indah.) On Day 6, both of you spent three hours in the most beautiful braindance you’ve ever done with anyone and come up with a whole framework just because you disagreed with how people thought you were moving ‘too fast’. On Day 25, he told your friends your overthinking was actually what he loved about you (although he had yet to understand the full extent of it haha). You have to really make an effort if you want to offend each other. Being with him is easy because you could talk about anything—menial and principal, you never had to translate your soul, not really. You never had to perform, but you allow the space for ‘mutual impact’ and for the other person to grow individually—all the while growing together.
   
3. You have the toolbox to overcome anything. Even when things go awry—as they have, and they will again—the two of you have what it takes to deal with them. Your superpower is in how you communicate: you take turns in being grounded when the other person’s triggered, and on rare occasions when you both were, you love each other too much to try your best to be the one staying on the ground. He told you he never had to be a different person even when you’re emotional—he could say what he means and it is precisely his reasoning that fixes the problem (which sometimes ended up making things worse for others). Is this what they mean when they say, being with the wrong person would make small problems big, yet with him, even the biggest problems seem chewable? On Month 1, he kept you calm through something that otherwise would’ve panicked you big time. You don’t always agree on everything, and this is the part that bothers you the most, but as he would always remind you—you could just talk it through. And the two of you have talked through a lot of things, you know you’re pretty good at it. Through every fight, he knows that it’s never the two of you against each other, but it’s the two of you against the problem. You love how you always resolve your fights, and hopefully, the record will stay this way.
   
4. You make an effing great team. You’re both terrific problem solvers—when you think about how life gets so messy sometimes, it calms you to know that he’s got your back, and you hope that he knows you got his. No matter what. Professionally—which is not why you’re doing this, but also something important to both of you independently—you have complementary skillsets: he knows many things that are in your blind spots, and you his. He taught you about things you never thought about, and you’d like to think that he learns a thing or two from you. You love how you would strategize together you before going into a battle, how you both provide a safe space (the ‘castle’) for each other before you leave to your respective wars.
   
5. He loves you the way you want to be loved. You know how other men have told you they loved you before and you always had a hard time believing them? You haven’t quite figured out why, but when he tells you this, you believe him. Maybe because you feel that he understands you. Maybe because he loves you as a verb, the way you want to be loved. How he protects you, takes care of you (especially when you’re sick), builds you up (though also teases you down, sigh), how the look in his brown eyes makes you feel seen. You hope that he knows that you love him so much too, even on the days that it was difficult to.

More importantly, you’re a much better partner now—more self-aware of your own issues and baggage, more compassionate about your and others’s struggle. You have significantly evolved from the first time you said yes. You’re still not a perfect partner by far, but for now, you’re pretty convinced that this relationship/partnership/soon-to-be-marriage is important enough for the two of you that you will put all the work necessary into it. It will not always be easy and rosy, but as long as we commit to always learning (about and from each other) and growing, things will work out in the end.

TL;DR; because maybe—just maybe—we have what it takes. Bismillah.