“No marriage till you’re 30.”

These words have been ingrained in me since the day I turned eight. I had just immigrated to the U.S., and my parents sat me down to tell me the three rules that would define my adolescence. 

First: no piercings or tattoos. (Some Jewish cemeteries prohibit the burial of people with tattoos, a practice that emerged after the Holocaust. My grave plot is already purchased, waiting for me in Canada.)

Second: marry another Jewish person. Their gender or sexuality does not matter, as long as they're Jewish. (My parents became more lenient on this one as time passed, but the principle still stood. For hundreds of years, my ancestors only procreated with Jews, and I was expected to do the same. According to a DNA test, I am 99.9% Ashkenazi Jewish. The rule derived from something my great-grandfather told my grandmother—to build a house, you need a strong foundation. For my family, that foundation was our shared history and Jewish heritage.)

And third: no marriage until 30, along with a requisite history of two or three long-term relationships before settling down. (If I were to ask for their blessing to marry my first love, the answer would be no.)

Their rationale made sense to me. The brain is not fully developed until age 25. Many of my parents’ friends who married young ended up divorced. In fact, divorce rates are higher for couples who marry between the ages of 20 and 25, with around 60% of those marriages failing. It’s unclear whether this is due to immaturity, financial instability, or something else—or if couples who marry later are simply more cautious about divorce due to age, fear of finding a new partner, or social judgment.

Why, then, I wondered, did Americans rush to marry so young? In the South, there was a weight in the air, thick with the expectation to find your high school sweetheart, to pin down “the one” before the ink on your youth was even dry. Despite all the statistics, people still leaped into it. My Jewish-Canadian identity taught me that timing is everything; you need to be older and more mature to be sure of what you want. But down South, it wasn’t about certainty—it was about proving to the world that you had it all figured out, that you could beat the odds in a country that worshiped the illusion of self-made perfection. And so, I never quite understood that rush, never quite understood the pull to marry young, because I never understood the culture in the first place.

My parents’ love story, however, was as clear as midnight starlight on still water.

Picture this: my father, lean, sharp blue eyes, and too intelligent for his own good. At 21, he was tanned and full of himself. He was sitting in a dimly lit bar with framed posters of The Godfather on the wall, staring into the wine-dark eyes of a girl who would later become my mother. She sported a ’70s trench coat, for it was winter in Toronto, and a chic tulle skirt that covered her knees. Her hair curly and makeup smudged, she found herself bored by their conversation. As she sipped her appletini, she realized she was not impressed by his so-called “Rico Suave” shtick. He was too cocky. Politely, she made an excuse about needing to tend to a friend, left early, and decided that Michael was a “no.”

A decade passed, and they finally met again for a meal. He’d changed. Not only was he kind and personable now, but he genuinely cared—and, thankfully, his frat boy days were behind him. He had a stable job, too. As my mother caught the twinkle in his aquamarine eyes, she felt herself blush. He would make a good husband, she thought. A good father, too. (He sure did.) 

Within six months, she was walking down the aisle.

I listened to my mother tell me this story until I internalized it as much as her American phone number or our new address in Dallas. She had my brother and I repeat each detail 10 times over, and then 10 times again, until it rolled off our tongues like a cold breath on a Canadian morning—or perhaps, like phlegm.

The next three years went by quickly. Suddenly, I was 11 and insecure in my body, my gender, and this new place I called home. I was at a sleepover at my then-best friend’s house, and we were sharing his twin bed. He was the kind of born-and-raised Texan who took me to his grandfather’s ranch and begged his mom for late-night “hubchubs” from Whataburger. We couldn’t have been raised more differently, but I loved him the same.

On nights like these, we would typically eat something you’re not supposed to have for dinner, like donuts. Then, we’d attempt to name all the countries in the world by memory and count all the stars on his ceiling tapestry, until our eyes grew sore and our bodies caved to exhaustion. But tonight was different. 

“When do you wanna get married?” he asked earnestly, his head tilted toward me.

I stared up at the ceiling, avoiding his piercing gaze. “30,” I said, my Adam’s apple bobbing as I swallowed saliva.

“30?! That’s so far away!” His body shifted closer to me as he turned on his side. He curled into himself, scratching his neck. “My parents got married right after college, and, dude, they’re so in love. I want that, you know? And I want it quick, while I’m still young.” 

He looked at me for too long, and I thought his crooked smile gave him away. But I was fed up with his naiveté. Headstrong and voice clear, I reprimanded his thinking.

“Look, I get that. But you don’t know where you’re going to be in a year for middle school, let alone five, 10, or 20 years. People change, especially when they’re young. Also, my mom says that love is chemical, and relationships are work. They’re not sustained by attraction, but commitment.” (He could barely get his times tables done in math class; I doubted his readiness for a genuine romantic commitment.) 

“But worst of all,” I continued, “even if you do commit, it won’t last. All of my parents’ friends got married too young, and they ended up sad, separated, and divorced. You don’t want that for yourself, do you?” I was panting as I finished my spiel, my heart rate catching up to the speed of my breath. When I turned to him, his eyes were wide and glossy with tears.

“You know, you can be a real mood-killer sometimes,” he whispered, his lips trembling. He turned away from me and moved toward the wall, pulling the shared cotton blanket with him and leaving the cold air to envelop my legs.

I had hurt him—this I understood. I stared up in silence at the ceiling, trying to count the stars until I could drift to sleep and forget this interaction. But I couldn’t. I stayed awake for hours, feeling awful for how sad I made him. Yet, at the same time, I strangely felt proud of myself, because I knew I had stayed true to myself and my family. In a part of the country where my cultural values were seen as especially foreign and obsequious, this was my one chance to establish myself as normal, mature, and worthy. I had proved to this American, Texas-born boy with shaggy hair that life wasn’t going to be so easy. I had stuck with my Jewish-Canadian upbringing and rebelled against American concepts of “the one.” I was an interloper and an outsider in his world, but I was my mother’s child all the same.

Nine years have passed. The leaves are falling, turning a tepid orange. I am 20, eating scrambled eggs and crispy hash browns at the V-Dub dining hall at Brown, and I’m a girl now, too. It has been five years since my childhood best friend’s parents got divorced.

Across from me is a guy friend who I asked to get breakfast with—something casual, so I could get to know him better and see if we might be a match. We chatted about the things you’re supposed to: how classes are going, what movies we enjoy, how nervous we are for the upcoming presidential election. And then came the things you’re not supposed to bring up so early—if we’re happy at school, where we see our lives going.

That night, I called my mom to tell her how it went. My eyes lit up as I debriefed the coffee date over FaceTime—me in Providence, her in Dallas, over 1,740 miles apart. She nodded along as I recounted the details, but then stopped me.

“Honey,” she cooed. “Why did you even ask him out in the first place?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, biting my inner cheek.

“Well…he’s 19, you’re 20. You’re just too young. You know, I didn’t have my first boyfriend until I was 22. 22! What’s the rush? You’ve got so much time. And he must be immature. Boys always take longer to catch up. Does he know you’re trans?”

I groaned. “Yes, mom. We’re friends.”

“Ok, good.” She nodded approvingly.

“I asked him out because I wanted to see if we’re a match. That’s all it really is. And mom, I’m not looking for anything serious,” I reassured her. “But I still want a relationship at some point in college. Besides, I’ve got to have three real relationships before I settle down. That’s the rule. So I want to stay on track and start exploring now.” I felt good about my explanation. “Plus,” I smiled, my gums showing, “he’s Jewish.”

She chuckled, making eye contact across the screen. On her lap was Olive, our 13-year-old Shih Tzu who I missed deeply. And then my mother’s expression darkened, as a new thought crept upon her.

“Pickle…” she mumbled. Pickle was what she called me when she wanted to comfort me, to remind me that she loved me.

“What?” I asked, a nervous edge creeping into my voice.

“That rule you mentioned. That doesn’t…apply to you, not anymore. Not after you transitioned.”

“Oh.” My expression grew somber. I gazed out the window of my dorm. The sky was a deep navy, verging on pitch black, and outside, crickets serenaded the night in full bloom.

I understood what she meant. For three years, I had bemoaned the struggles of dating while trans to her. 

For one, the proportion of the population who would be open to the idea is slim (roughly 5%). Though Gen Z attitudes are more progressive than older generations, many are still apprehensive. Second, being trans carries emotional burdens that can be difficult for partners to navigate, especially if they’re unfamiliar with the trans experience. Third, romantic partners have to be comfortable with their sexuality—whatever that may be—and unashamed to be publicly with a trans person. While the latter should be the standard, the former is harder to ask of college students just finding their place in the world. Fourth, I am what is problematically dubbed “cis-passing,” meaning someone probably couldn’t clock me as trans unless I disclose it. (The term is considered problematic because it purports an artificiality to my womanhood. Even if I “look like a woman,” the term assumes that I’m not really one, instead just “passing.”) Passing creates difficulties because I often find confusion on the faces of potential romantic interests when I tell them I’m trans, driving them away from something they aren’t ready for and couldn’t have expected.

It was clear why my mother’s supreme third rule had shifted. What hadn’t hit me, though, was the underlying assumption behind such a shift: I wouldn’t find love more than once, and that I would have been able to if I were cis.

With this, I began to feel guilty. The only thing my mom has ever wanted me to be is happy. I felt my world collapse as I realized that such happiness might become elusive, out of reach—for both her and me.

I was a rules-based child who loved nothing more than organization and structure. Yet here I was, experiencing a fundamental shift in my perception of reality. I had glorified this so-called “third rule” throughout my childhood, perhaps as a way to solidify my Jewish-Canadian identity in a part of the U.S. that was predominantly Christian and conservative. I repeated this mantra at sleepovers, dinners, even prom. It was what I knew to be fundamentally true, and what separated me from my peers who grew up in a different culture.

But now, the thing I knew to be truest was wrong, and it was wrong only for me. This thing was wrong because of who I fundamentally was. There was nothing I could do to change that.

“So what now?” I asked her.

“What now?” she replied.

In the coming days, I reflected on our conversation. At first, I felt somber, then rageful, and finally rested on content. I realized I was placing far too much pressure on a simple coffee date, especially with a friend. Relationships take time to build, and you can’t force them. If I don’t reach that magic number of three relationships before marriage, that’s surely fine. I’ll have matured anyway. Although I am certainly not dating for marriage at this age, I can still let myself look for the qualities I’d like in a potential future partner.

But more importantly—beyond the troubles of dating while trans—the person who is meant to be with me will love me for me, not in spite of me. That principle applies to everyone reading this, regardless of gender identity.

If upholding that standard means I have to wait, I will wait, because I can see my future: I’ve just turned 40, and my wrinkles are coming in. I am with someone who has matured since his time at Brown, or wherever else. We have a dog (a Shih Tzu, of course) named Eeyore, or perhaps Rooster. We’re on our balcony overlooking a lake, rippling in the sunlight. He has brought me chamomile tea and dark chocolate.

And I am happy.