By Jenny Bethke

Like most American girls, Little Golden Books about Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White helped form a huge part of my imagination as a child.  I dreamed about someday finding my own prince who would sweep me off my feet, treat me like a princess, and make all the other women in the land incredibly jealous. As I grew older I replaced my Golden Books with romantic movies that revealed Prince Charming to exist in the grown-up world as well.

Although I realized that even movie heroes make mistakes too, I was still convinced that the only major flaw in my Prince Charming was that he hadn’t shown up yet. Reluctantly listening with pity as newlywed girlfriends shared grievances about their husbands, I secretly assured myself that I would never fall prey to such marital disappointment.  I was going to be the one woman who would actually find the perfect Prince Charming.

I had written a list of the attributes I expected to find in my prince.  It included things like honesty, gentleness, chivalry, spiritual depth, and a good sense of humor. All these qualities were (and I believe still are) good things to look for in a man before you say, “I do”.  However, what I’ve learned since is that the majority of my expectations were not written down on paper. In fact, I wasn’t even aware of most of them. I had unknowingly assumed that good men operated in a certain manner; this assumption was based on the manners I observed in the most important men in my life. I never bothered to consider that there could be other kinds of quality men.

My admiration for my father played the foremost role in creating this list of expectations. He’s basically MacGyver and can fix anything so long as he has instructions and a little duct tape. He is also quiet and terribly sensible.  So, I added “manly, reserved handyman” to the list of qualities I assumed every good man would have. 

In addition, my close friend married a wonderfully sensitive husband with impeccable taste. So, I added “sensitivity and designer style” to the ideal. You can see how after 25 years of dreaming, my constant additions of “princely” attributes became a ridiculously long and sometimes contradictory list of assumptions.

The day finally came when I met my husband. We both knew fairly quickly that we had found our match, and we married within the year. What he didn’t know was that during my single years I had accumulated this vast catalog of charming qualities that he had no chance of measuring up to. Lucky for him, he had the one quality I never thought to add to my list: a thick enough skin to deal with me.

My unspoken expectations crept out and stung him whenever he acted against my ideals. If he hired a plumber instead of fixing the sink himself, I questioned his financial savvy. To him, not spending the entire Saturday under the sink was worth the money it would take to hire a plumber. Since that wasn’t the way my father would have handled it, I was unsettled. I even worried about what my father might say if he found out. Also, compared to my friend’s gentle husband, mine is a bit brash. I worried that she would think him callous. Little disenchantments like this constantly ruffled my feathers. I found myself judging him not only by my own standards, but by the standards I thought others held.