There's a funny article in Britain's Daily Mail, a right-of-centre rag that delights in outraging the masses.
In this survey, bachelors want women to be super-slim, yet eat heartily, and find high-earning, well-educated women attractive, though half of them would prefer their wife to stay at home with their children.
Fortunately, this is all make-believe. Airy pie-in-the-sky fantasies have a way of evaporating when Miss Right, in all her plump or lettuce-picking glory, comes wandering onstage.
However, it is worth a brief nod to the usual young male interest in women who look young and therefore fertile (slim), sexually charged (enjoying food), intelligent and high status (degrees and money) and yet need men for something (by staying at home with children).
I cannot resist telling a hilarious story about a very young man who told me what his top 2 requirements for a wife were. He said I'd get mad, but I said I would keep an open mind. First, he said, she had to be really, really, well-educated. And second, he said, blushing a fiery red, she had to be submissive.
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Essentially he dreamed of a wife who was a witty and interesting conversationalist and yet wouldn't boss him around or make him feel stupid. But of course he didn't know how to put it like that. Men are hilarious. I love them.
In case my title isn't self-evident, I should explain that airy-fairy fantasies mean squat. Only concrete reality has any value. When we are called to marry, we are called to marry not some ideal, but the unique, living, breathing, imperfect, darling creature beside us at the altar.
Meanwhile, I feel compelled to remark again, this being a blog that praises the chaste Single life, that men and women are more than potential spouses. They have a dignity in themselves. To a certain extent, they can make good opposite-sex friends. They can make great mentors, disciples or colleagues. But it is best to encounter every person wondering who he/she is in him/herself and then only secondarily consider who he/she is (or could be) in relation to you.
2 comments:
This reminds me of our university chaplain who enjoys pointing out that the most important quality in a potential spouse is that they exist. They can be perfect in all other areas, but if they fall short on existing, no dice.
Nicely said. I love your "love" - the way you understand that men put things the way they do but having mercy on what their hearts really want to say.
You made me recall Pope John Paul II's contention that woman was created "a person for her own sake." We are each created because God love us personally and individually, regardless of vocational state. But marriage is such a gift in finding a way to unite two persons in communion.
Thanks again.
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