Relationship Advice from the Guy Who Never Wanted One

You don’t need to commit to a lifetime—just a chapter

My wife, Nicole, and I recently celebrated ten years of getting together for the last time.

I know: two questions:

1. “Ten years?” Yes, I do feel old.

2. “Last time?” We had a couple of false starts, mostly because I was being an idiot.

The night I met Nicole, I was on a semester abroad. I had a train home in thirty minutes. I went for it anyway. Not strategic—just “now or never.”

I liked her immediately. That was the problem.

When we got back to the U.S., we dated a bit, but I kept pushing her away. “We’re both about to graduate —our lives are going to change.” “I’m in the army. I don’t want attachments.” “This just won’t work.” I had a reason for everything.

Two-and-a-half years later, we were both back in Europe, and we gave it a second chance. Before I get to what Nicole said, I want to talk about why people in our environment have such a hard time with this kind of moment.

We’ve all heard repeatedly (especially those who took Crafting Your Life) that picking a life partner is the most important decision we’ll make. As HBS students, we’ve translated that into “optimize accordingly.”

It’s a cliché, but it’s what HBS students do: solve for optionality. We hit “maybe” on Partful invites. We want to know who’s in a class before we commit to taking it (shout out Course Buddies).

It bleeds into dating. People keep options open, find reasons it won’t work, and hesitate to commit because “what if there’s someone better?” The fear of “not optimal” ends up doing more harm than the actual risk of picking incorrectly.

I’m not writing this from a perch of having figured it out. I got lucky. I spent too long overthinking and finding reasons for us not to work, and the piece you’re reading would look very different if Nicole had a little less patience.

The Pitch That Worked

What changed the second time wasn’t that I was ready. It was that Nicole pitched me on something smaller.

I was clear on never wanting kids and was happy to never get married. She wanted both. I wanted to live abroad; she wanted to put down roots. On paper, we were opposites and could have argued about whose vision was right.

Instead, she said, “we’re both in Europe right now, doing similar things, living similar lifestyles. Let’s do this chapter together and figure the rest out later.”

That was the whole pitch. No thirty-year contract. Not the full venture. Just a round.

(I know, only at HBS would someone describe falling in love as “joining for a round”…)

Here’s why it landed and why it might land for you. The army moves you every two or three years, so I was already living chapter to chapter because of work. Nicole’s pitch wasn’t asking me to think differently about commitment. It was inviting her into how I already thought.

There’s a parallel here that should be obvious to anyone at HBS.

CPD tells us—and alumni reinforce it—that as many as one in six of us will leave our first post-MBA job within a year and that most will do so within three years. Different role, different company, different vertical. We will sign offers, convinced we have it figured out and, months later, realize we were wrong about ourselves.

We accept this for our careers. We don’t apply it to our partners. We expect ourselves to evaluate another person against a life plan we can’t hold steady for twelve months.

If you can’t predict your own trajectory, holding a prospective partner to a standard of certainty about theirs is doubly absurd. Both of you are going to change—and that’s a great thing. The question isn’t whether your current selves match. It’s whether you want to grow into the next chapter together.

Building Beats Picking

Most of the discourse around this gets the work in the wrong place. We treat selection as the hard part and assume everything after is downhill. It’s the opposite. Picking is one decision. Building is every day after.

For us, the building was just showing up a little. Hearing how her day went, telling her about mine. Cooking dinner and doing the dishes.

Then the hard stuff came. Family crises, loss, the kind of moments that show you who your partner actually is. We learned we could rely on each other at our lowest.

I got it wrong many times. I’d say the wrong thing on the car ride home. But I’d adjust, next time asking, “how did that make you feel?” instead of “why didn’t you just do X?” Nicole was iterating, too. We both became better partners than we were the day before.

What I felt at the start was a crush on someone funny, adventurous, and kind with whom I wanted to spend more time. That’s it. Ten years of chapters turned that into something of which I didn’t know I was capable. I didn’t show up to chapter one ready to love anyone. Nicole and I built that together.

This is also the answer to the obvious objection: doesn’t “commit to a chapter” just mean “keep an exit ready”? No. Chapters compound. You don’t get the depth of Chapter Two without having done Chapter One. The version of me and Nicole in Chapter Four was only possible because of what we had built in the first through third chapters. The framing lowers the bar to start. It does not lower the bar once you’re in.

You don’t need one hundred percent alignment on values. Complementary works—and arguably works better. Nicole and I differ in ways for which, ten years in, I’m grateful. Where I’d push too hard, she pulls back. Where I’d hold off, she’d push forward. We didn’t engineer that. We discovered it by being together long enough for the differences to become useful instead of points of friction.

I’m still not a good partner. Neither was Nicole when we started. Neither are you, probably. That’s the point. You’re betting on growth in yourself and in them. You’re the VC, not the acquirer. You’re not buying a finished company. You’re investing in potential and committing to build.

The Pre-Seed Diligence

So, what do you look for at the start of a chapter? Stop asking whether this person is the perfect match for your life plan. Ask three questions instead.

1. Do I enjoy spending time with them?

2. Is it fun?

3. Am I learning from them?

You can’t due-diligence your way to certainty on a pre-seed bet. The information you need doesn’t exist yet. It only gets created by being in the chapter. Bet on the person, knowing and excited that they’ll change (as you will, too).

I started this piece by telling you that Nicole and I recently celebrated ten years of getting together for the last time. What I didn’t say is that I almost didn’t make it here. There were moments when the chapter framing could have become an excuse to leave instead of a reason to stay. I stayed because every time I looked at the next chapter, I knew it would be better with her in it. That was the mindset I carried with me until commitment stopped feeling like a risk and became the obvious move.

We have a son now, Anders, who didn’t exist in any version of the life plan I was protecting at age twenty-three. Neither did a wedding. Both got built one chapter at a time.

Whether you’re leaving in a few weeks or have another year here, the chapter in front of you is enough to which to commit. If you like someone, commit to a chapter. Start building. The rest will follow.

Nils Olsen (MBA/MPP ‘26) spent nine years in the army and a decade as Nicole’s backpacking, ski, scuba, and wine-tasting buddy. First dog parents to Olive and now actual parents to Anders, they're betting on the next chapter being the best one yet.