You’d Better Have Something to Talk About
On the algorithm of signs
The morning after our anniversary dinner, Friedrich Nietzsche turned up in my Substack feed. The algorithm had its reasons.
Marriage as a long conversation. When entering a marriage, one should ask the question: do you think you will be able to have good conversations with this woman right into old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the time in interaction is spent in conversation.
I stared at the screen, coffee growing cold in my hands, remembering the conversation from the night before. Our friends—nine years married to our nineteen—had asked what advice we might offer. Now here was Nietzsche, echoing the very heart of what we’d tried to say.
And then Haroon, whom I followed on Substack, reposted the same quote. That familiar flutter of recognition stirred—a sign, or ayah, as we Muslims say. In Islam, signs are the language of God, written into the fabric of everyday life. When the universe speaks twice in one morning, you pay attention.
I found myself returning to the question I hadn’t quite voiced the night before: what holds a marriage together—not in its ordinary seasons, but in the extraordinary ones, when life cracks open and remakes you?
The restaurant specialized in Mediterranean food—the kind of place where you order too many small plates and spend the evening picking at hummus and labneh while the conversation unfolds in layers. Our friends, Sarah and Omar, moved through their meal with the easy choreography of a couple comfortable in each other’s rhythms.
“What’s the secret?” Sarah asked, spearing a piece of roasted cauliflower. “You two seem to have figured something out.”
Shabbir and I exchanged that practiced glance of the long-married—equal parts amusement and caution.
“Encourage each other’s endeavors,” I said after a pause. “Create space for the other person to grow.”
Shabbir, unprompted, jumped in with parenting advice instead. He launched into a story about the trip we took to Turkey when our youngest was just a year old—how they should embrace complex trips as a whole family, not wait for the perfect age or stage.
I looked at him. “That’s great,” I said, “but we’re supposed to be giving marriage advice.”
He grinned, unabashed. “Food coma. That’s all I’ve got for now.”
I watched Sarah’s face as I spoke, realizing I was articulating something we had long practiced but never quite named. “There’s this societal expectation,” I said, “that marriage and kids should put an end to adventure. But in my case, it was marriage that made new adventures possible.”
It struck me even as I said it: we’d built a marriage that operates on abundance, not scarcity—the more space Shabbir gave me to grow, the more I wanted to pour back into our shared life. Space breeds generosity, not selfishness.
I thought of the seven years when he traveled weekly for consulting—a sacrifice made bearable by the freedom he’d always cultivated for me. I respected how hard he worked, the stability he built for us. But that kind of travel takes its toll. I chose to frame it through gratitude, though I knew how easily it could tip toward resentment or loneliness.
And now the roles are shifting. My career is moving into a stage that will soon involve regular travel, public work, new demands on time and presence. We’re already having the early back-and-forth about it—his unease, my pull toward this next phase, both of us still learning what it will mean. It’s a different kind of conversation now—not the seamless ones born of shared values, but the messier kind, where values meet circumstance.
“We took turns being the anchor,” I said, spooning out more fattoush. “Someone has to hold things steady while the other reaches.”
Omar nodded thoughtfully. “We’ve started to feel that shift too,” he said. “In the early years it was all about setting up life—house, kids, finances. Now it’s more about making space for each other to explore what’s next.”
Sarah set down her fork. “The thing is,” she said, her voice softening, “someday it’ll be just the two of us again. The kids will leave, the careers will wind down. We’ll be sitting across from each other at breakfast. We’d better have something to talk about.”
“We’re getting an early preview of that now,” Shabbir said quietly.
The architecture of our life has changed in ways neither of us imagined. A year ago, we had one set of rhythms. Now, it’s a different tempo altogether—more time at home, more hours in conversation, more hours alone.
While I work, Shabbir wanders, ponders, interrupts with questions ranging from profound to delightfully absurd.
“Do you think our children will remember this as a hard time or a rich time?” he’ll ask, appearing in the doorway with a cup of chai.
Or: “Why do so many men struggle with vulnerability?” he’ll muse, mid-spoonful, as he piles biryani onto his plate or surveys the snack options in our pantry.
The man who once optimized spreadsheets now excavates philosophy with equal zeal. And I’m reminded of how we first met—not in person, but through AOL Instant Messenger, where we spent hours talking philosophy before we’d ever seen each other’s faces. Time would vanish. Words built the first architecture of us.
Some of those questions still turn into conversations—longer, slower than the ones we used to have. About care, about how men do or don’t talk about vulnerability, about what kind of life—intellectual and otherwise—can be built inside whatever new structure life offers next.
That, too, is part of the long conversation. Not because things are resolved, but because they aren’t—and the terms are always shifting.
Sarah was right. Someday it will be just us, sitting across from each other at breakfast. But sometimes “someday” arrives early, and you find yourself in the middle of the next negotiation: who you are becoming now, and what the conversation between you will need to hold.
When Nietzsche’s words appeared in my feed, my first thought was of surveillance capitalism—how our devices mirror our preoccupations back to us.
In Islam, we believe that God communicates through signs for those who know how to read them. Sometimes a sign is a sunset that stops you in your tracks, sometimes it’s a verse from the Qur’an that speaks directly to your current struggle. Sometimes it’s a nineteenth-century German philosopher appearing twice in one morning to validate a conversation you had about marriage the night before.
And perhaps it doesn’t matter whether the source is divine orchestration or algorithmic coincidence. Maybe God speaks through search engines now. Maybe the universe has learned to use our technology not just to sell us things, but to remind us of truths we’ve momentarily forgotten.
Or maybe Haroon simply has impeccable timing and a philosophical bent.
Either way: Nietzsche was right. Marriage is a long conversation, and you’d best choose someone whose mind will still surprise and delight you when careers are over, the house is quiet, and you’re left with nothing but words and time.
This was really lovely to read. “We took turns being the anchor.”