When Sana and Adnan Akhand got married, they thought marriage would just be a continuation of the romantic whirlwind that had swept them up when first dating. They were best friends and saw eye to eye on pretty much everything: They both loved traveling, neither wanted kids, and they were equally wary of falling into the traditional gender roles they had grown up with at home. And at first, it seemed like the only source of marital tension was who did the dishes.

But as they settled into married life, the small differences they hadn’t noticed before began to grow into something bigger. Especially when it came to money. 

Sana wasn’t much of a budgeter, while Adnan worked in accounting, so it made sense that he would handle their finances. But as Adnan told us in an interview, “We didn’t really fully realize how this would start putting those stereotypical gender roles on our marriage.”

Resentment started to fester, and they found themselves slipping into the kind of relationship that neither of them wanted. But what could they do to reclaim independence and invest in themselves as individuals, without dissolving their marriage?

“We needed something drastic to get us out of the routine and to get back on track of these people that we fell in love with,” Sana said. And so they decided to find a new, more modern way to break free while staying together.

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