Waiting for Mr. Right

Aditha Dissanayake

No longer blind

Love is no longer blind. Not for modern women. Educated and employed they feel they are financially and emotionally secure to remain unmarried for the rest of their lives.

“The days when young girls eloped with their lovers are no more” says Badra Udawatta, Counselor at the Alokaya Counseling Center, of the Family Planning Association. “Girls today weigh the pros and cons of a situation before they make life changing decisions”. Udawatta believes some women postpone marriage because they are frightened of the restrictions that entail a marriage or because they come from broken families.

“Women who have seen their mothers suffer are scared the same fate would await them when they get married”. Another reason for women wishing to remain single is the sense of responsibility they feel towards their parents and siblings. According to Udawatta “Women who have formed strong bonds with their family prefer to remain at home and take upon themselves the responsibility of looking after their parents and younger siblings”.

Thus, unlike in the past, contemporary women raised to seek careers, rather than husbands, wish to spend their youth “conquering the world” instead of exchanging their freedom for married life.

Elizabeth Bennet, love at first sight was not for her

Little did Elizabeth Bennet know when she first met Darcy, one day he would be the man she would marry. Love at first sight was not for her. Nor for most of us.

Take television advertisements. At first sight most girls are irritated with the guy who tries to capture her heart. It is only at the second or third meeting, after he has used a certain brand of perfume, a certain razor blade to shave, eaten a certain biscuit, used a certain mosquito repellent, or had renovated his bathroom with a certain plastic pipe (the list is endless) that he becomes irresistible to her.

Razor blades, after shave and biscuits apart what are the qualities women look for when it comes to choosing their marriage partner?

Good looks? This may come as a surprise but most women seemingly do not wish to share the rest of their lives with extremely handsome men. While most feel it is harmless to be ‘crazy’ over Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, Tiger Woods, Brian Adams, Amitabh Bachchan, (again the list is endless) they believe good looking men are vain and difficult to live with and therefore not for them.

A graduate from the University of Peradeniya says she had always dreamt of marrying a quiet, tall, slim and dark man, somewhat like Peter de Almeida, but ended up marrying her batch mate who is anything but tall, dark, slim or quiet. “But I am happy with my choice and I feel I would not have been so happy if I had married the man of my dreams”. Conclusion: good looks do not really matter when it comes to finding the ideal partner.

What about wealth? Ever seen that slogan written in black, on white t-shirts that says “Wanted: A good man, should own a house and car. Please send photo of house and car”? Not so in real life. Most married women I spoke with said that good husbands do not necessarily have to be rich. A teacher in Kurunegala married to a manager of a bank says when they got married more than twenty three years ago they had virtually nothing to call their own. “But now we have a house and a car and we have seen our children through university. It feels good to think I was there to help him from the very beginning. It feels good to think we did it together”.

Though good looks and wealth do not count much when it comes to searching for the ideal husband what do seem to count with most women is that the man of their choice should make a good father. “When my husband goes on business trips he misses us and is eager to come home as soon as possible. This means a lot” says a housewife in Piliyandala whose husband owns a travel agency. “When I married him, even though he was not the man of my dreams, I knew he would look after me and our children. That was enough then, and is still enough today”.

Most women also feel that the ideal husband should help her with the household chores. “When you meet someone who can cook and do housework, marry him” is no longer considered a joke among undergraduates. “If he feels it is girlish to make the tea in the morning or help me with the cooking then he is not man enough for me” says a fourth year student at the Uva Wellassa University. She admits being able to look after himself is one of the qualities that she finds attractive in her fiance.

Even though most women turned their noses at those who continuously show off the presents their husbands give them on their birthdays or on valentine’s day feeling the need to show off to the outside world how loving their spouse is, is an indication something is wrong somewhere, most agree it feels good to be pampered every once in a blue moon. “If his eyes light up when he sees me in a new dress and if he says I look pretty even when I have bags under my eyes and look disheveled after a sleepless night with the baby, that is enough” confesses a lawyer and the mother of three sons.

Almost everyone interviewed said they did not mind if their husbands looked at other women. They found it normal and even amusing. In other words, the good husband is seemingly someone who can admire other women provided he admires his wife more.

Even though critics of literature feel the kind of intense passion Romeo and Juliet feel for one another had to end with their deaths, that their love was too like the lightening to have lasted for the rest of their lives had they lived to reach old age, in real life the “can’t be out of each other’s sight, can’t stay without phoning each other” kind of feeling mellows and turns into tenderness and companionship if you are with the right partner.

Who then, is the right partner? The best definition was given by an anonymous woman in the Reader’s Digest of the 1960s. “I guess you can define a good husband as the one who, for absolutely no reason in the world, makes you feel that with him you are home”. There you have it. Why wait for Mr. Right when you can live happily ever after with Mr. Not So Right?

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