Determining the characteristics of the best wife and best husband can be undertaken within certain parameters but is an impossible task as far as coming to any set and complete statement of traits, behaviors, and attitudes. Each person is an individual, and each marriage is an individual relationship, different from all others even as there may be certain characteristics in common. People need different things from other people and bring different values from within themselves to a relationship. It is indeed wrong to begin to think that there is such a thing as an ideal wife or ideal husband, for we then begin comparing a given instance to that ideal and will always find it wanting. Probably the most important characteristic for a good marriage is for each partner to recognize this reality, that each is an individual, that their relationship is itself unique to them, and so that what fits in their life together and brings a mutual satisfaction is beneficial even if it might not be for someone else.
Vicki Iovine in a recent article notes how she has been caught many times measuring her marriage against those of her friends, often finding another couple she believes are ideal and happier than she and her husband, only to find that couple divorced a year later. Still, the continues trying to find that ideal couple and to measure her relationship against others, and she asks why she does this:
Perhaps it's because, as a child of divorce and way too much television, I don't have any realistic models of what a great marriage looks like. Perhaps it's because as a product of the I can have it all feminist era, I won't accept a merely good marriage, I insist on fabulous. More likely, it's because, in these times of a 50 percent divorce rate, I feel I must be hypervigilant to stay on the right side of the statistics (Iovine 70).
This search for perfection is doomed to failure, for human beings are not perfect and do not create ...