A Night Off

Falling in Love with Myself

There has been a lot said (written, blogged, Instagrammed) about Date Night. A lot of people credit Date Night with keeping their marriages happy, functional and balanced. It is a conscious choice to prioritize your relationship by making a consistent commitment to spending quality time together. It’s about staying present to one another, instead of figuring out social calendars, paying bills, or passing out during a Netflix binge. It’s a sacred space to make each other feel honored, cherished and loved.

And while I am a big advocate for Date Night (see proof), this post isn’t about Date Night. It’s about taking a night off.

The two things I continuously strive for in living my life are 1) authenticity, and 2) balance. Of course, I sometimes get sidetracked by wanting to make others happy, fitting in, being liked, living up to some ideal standard or socialized norm, or just general FOMO. I’ve always had this internal monologue, weighing the implications of tipping either way in the inherent battle between the “wants” and “shoulds.” Deciding when to accept an invite and when to decline. When to rally and when to veg out. When to socialize and when to disconnect.

While my Iranian Jewish roots and American upbringing often seemed at odds with one another during my childhood and adolescence, there was one thing the two cultures seemed to agree on: being social, outgoing and gregarious is the mark of a balanced, likable and successful person. In a community that loves celebrating, I was raised riding a never-ending carousel of birthday parties, Shabbat dinners, family brunches, Bar Mitzvahs, brisses, weddings, engagement parties, holiday parties, anniversary parties and just-because parties. Sometimes I loved it and sometimes I dreaded it. But opting out was never available — either because it was mandated by my family, or later on, because I feared missing out or alienating myself in high school. So I went wherever I was supposed to.

Until I left for college. Boston was where I really fell in love with myself for the first time. The decision to leave Los Angeles in the first place, was a test of staying true to myself despite my parents’ hesitations and all my closest friends heading to local schools. And so it set into a motion, a lifetime attempt to continue following my own path. I fell in love with making friends based on shared interests and philosophies, rather than convenience. I fell in love with watching foreign films by myself. I fell in love with ordering a chicken parm sub for delivery and spending the night in front of the TV. Five days a week, I was a social creature — making some of my best friends, having my craziest nights of partying and taking road trips with people I barely knew. The other two days, I flew solo. I learned that I love being alone. I learned that I really enjoy my own company.

Moving back home was a major assault on my commitment to prioritizing “wants” over “shoulds”. I spent two years figuring out how to preserve the parts of me that had blossomed in Boston, while reconnecting with familiar faces and navigating demanding social expectations. When I finally got the ratio right, I started business school and again felt the (self) pressure of being everywhere — networking, recruiting, clubs, conferences, study groups — and apparently doing that all while readjusting my alcohol intake to that of freshman year of college. I almost dropped out after the first quarter.

This battle with myself seemed cyclical with each new move, job or other change. I’d get sucked into what I thought was expected of me, what I thought would make me the best friend, student, daughter, employee, girlfriend, whatever — and then I’d be a mess until I refocused on my list of things that made me feel whole: reading a novel with an English Breakfast latté, blasting dance music while painting a large canvas, taking myself out for a fancy dinner, a walk by the ocean, a night in with my journal.

Having tinkered with the formula over the years, I realized my body always lets me know when I’ve gone too far in either direction. Two baby showers in one week and I catch a cold. Back-to-back family obligations and I become unpleasant to be around. Four nights in a row at home and I’m depressed.

When I start driving my decisions based on factors outside of myself — thinking about how I should be showing up, rather than following my gut — I start to break down.

I started thinking harder about my yeses and time shared with others. I established healthy boundaries, even though I still struggled with the guilt of letting others down. I felt I had found the balance.

Then I got married. Having never been married, I wasn’t sure how the role of wife was different than the role of a girlfriend. I wasn’t clear on what my husband expected of his spouse, and I felt muddled on what I expected of myself. After all, we’re bombarded by fairytales and artificial narratives of what these things should look like: love, commitment, marriage, happily ever after.

Was I supposed to cook dinner every night? (I don’t. Not even every other night.) Were we supposed to do everything together? (We do a lot of things together.) Could I still travel on my own? (I do.) How would we manage all of the combined requests and invitations from our individual families and friends? (Despite the genius of a shared Google Calendar and checking in with each other often, I still struggle with this one.) I had spent years nailing down my system. Whereas a night or two off seemed normal and manageable when we were dating, I assumed sharing a home and becoming a family dictated different rules and considerations. So I’ve been paying attention to the ratios again, and weighing how to continue the love affair with myself, without making my partner feel that I’ve been unfaithful.

I’m pretty sure Jerry Maguire single-handedly hammered the final nail in the coffin burying the concept of functional differentiated romantic relationships with the oft-quoted line “you complete me.”

The idea that we are incomplete before we find our “one”… it just doesn’t sit well with me. Of course, my partner loves me, supports me, challenges me, intrigues me, betters me, consoles me and does a lot of other things that have allowed me to shift into a new sphere of awareness and compassion, with a slightly altered sense of purpose than I did before we became a couple. But complete me? Well, that seems like a lot of fucking pressure.

The person I fell in love with was a person before I fell in love with him. With friends, hobbies and vices. I want to show interest in his interests and participate where I can — as a sage mentor recently said, the best way to connect with someone is to “give a shit about the things they give a shit about.” But I also don’t assume that I’d be his top choice to play tennis with (I actually know I’m not) or eat with (I don’t eat sushi, pork belly, siracha or 15 other things that make him insanely happy). I’d rather he enjoy those things the way he wants to enjoy them, without modifying them for me. And I’d like him to do those things without me sometimes, so that I can take a night off.

My nights off all look different. Sometimes it’s dinner with my girlfriends. Sometimes it’s the theater with my mom. Sometimes it’s a long workout and a vegan dinner alone down the street from my old apartment. Sometimes it’s scarfing Fatburger while watching Sex and the City in my underwear, on the rare night I get the house to myself. Tonight, I spent 90 minutes moving, labeling and organizing all of my random ramblings from Notes to Evernote and it was one of the most satisfying evenings my OCD has ever seen.

It’s not that I can’t do these things with my husband. I often do. The truth is that we spend a lot of time together. A lot. Besides the fact that we genuinely enjoy each other’s company, we both happen to share the same number one love language — quality time. So it makes sense that we choose to show each other our love by making time to be together often. We’re together most nights of the week, so it actually requires a conscious effort to take a night off.

And conscious I am — that I am a better partner (and all around more pleasant person) when there is that space. I get shivers from the way Khalil Gibran articulates his thoughts “On Marriage” in The Prophet. I even quoted the line “Let there be spaces in your togetherness” in my wedding vows (and on our Furthermore Instagram) — a somewhat unconventional alternative to the more common declarations of “oneness”. Of course, I consider my husband in every aspect of life. I no longer make decisions that only serve me. But I am part of the new family we have created, and feeding my own soul, feeds our relationship.

Here’s the thing about creating space in a relationship — it makes me feel closer. Not just the whole “distance makes the heart grow fonder” thing. Sure, I miss him when we’re apart sometimes, but the real value added to our relationship is that I become reawakened to the relationship with myself. I get to listen to my inside voice instead of negotiating with it. I remember that I do in fact make myself happy, so that I don’t saddle him with that responsibility. I find laser focus on the projects that I’m passionate about and feel completely in my element as I pursue them. After falling back in love with myself, I come back feeling inspired and invigorated.

While we are developing the curriculum and online experience for our start-up venture Furthermore, we continue to create guardrails so that there is also space between the relationship we have as spouses and the relationship we have as Co-Founders. Work-related stuff gets communicated via work email addresses. Personal stuff via personal email addresses. (Most recently there is a new email address for a new side project he’s working on, and my compartmentalizing brain is literally turned on by all the separate email threads.)

And we are careful to take a break from the Furthermore Talks we espouse, because the goal of the curriculum to build trust, intimacy and confidence in our relationship, gives us the security to allow one another the necessary space to be ourselves and explore autonomously — as individuals outside the relationship — which is what ultimately keeps attraction and connectedness in a relationship.

So I take a night off. Not just for me, but for us.