She’s Perfect

Loving the reality of the person in front of you, not the ideal.

I have been married for seven years now.

For newlyweds, that may seem like a long time. For veterans married twenty plus years, it may look like we’re just getting started.

But seven years is significant. It means you’ve moved out of the “honeymoon stage” and into the building and maintaining part of your relationship.

A couple of years ago, I was listening to a podcast where Matthew McConaughey said the problem with relationships is that we put our partners on a pedestal. We think of them as superhuman, perfect in every way. It’s a hard standard to live up to and it has a negative effect on our relationships.

For some reason, that stuck with me. And it backs up a realization I had the other day.

I was home from work. My wife had just gotten home too. I gave her a hug, and the thought that went through my mind was, She’s perfect.

Then I caught myself.

No. She’s not perfect. But I’m not either.

Neither of us are. We are two people making it through life together, working to make this relationship work, to pursue our goals, and to live a fulfilled life.

I’m am writing this because I think it’s an important mindset to have. Your partner should be the most important person in your life. You should love them and do everything you can for them. But they will have bad days. You will have bad days. Both of you are still working through things and trying to be better.

It’s a trap a lot of people fall into. They think they’ve met the perfect man or the perfect woman. Then, after a while, they realize that the “perfect” person they are with is not perfect, and they struggle.

That is okay. We’re all human here.

When we view our partners as perfect, we make it so they cannot be imperfect. They cannot have a bad day. They cannot be human.

By putting them on a pedestal, we don’t allow them to fall, to have flaws, to fail.

But if they can be imperfect, so can you. And then you’re not loving an idea of what they should be. You’re loving them as a person. As a human.

When people recite the marriage vows, for better or for worse, it really means this: the person standing in front of you may be perfect in your eyes. Maybe even perfect for you. But they are also human.