Hi All,

Well, we are officially into the Christmas season now, and my bride and I did a fair amount of driving here there and everywhere, all locally this past weekend. Before my wife got to the radio and changed it to the all Christmas music station (yes, they always wait until Nov 12), I heard a song with a line in it, that started the wheels spinning. It wasn’t even a line really, just a short two word phrase…”perfect imperfections”.

We can likely all remember back to the premarital counseling days when there was the discussions surrounding the toothpaste and the toilet paper roll…really? Is that they best they can do? Just buy two tubes of toothpaste, and use separate drawers. Our toilet paper holder is in an impossible to reach place when you are sitting, so it sits on end on the counter (I know, not a really workable solution for the OCD among us), and that works for us. Those solutions are easy.

What I want to get to in this post is the more difficult stuff, the unchangeable stuff about your spouse. Very often, before we were all married, it was these quirks or imperfections that attracted us to our BF/GF; that we thought were cute, because they were so individual and unique. Those things like moles, or childhood accident scars, or disease inflicted scars, or cowlicks, or whatever; and maybe quite often, many of us have a combination of these and others that created the “perfect” person for us. Maybe it is not even physical; maybe you have married the physically perfect human specimen, but since we all know that there is no such thing as a perfect human being, there will be something else, something that comes from upbringing, or something that arises from poor parenting…you get the idea. There is something.

However, once we are a few years into marriage, those imperfections become irritations that eventually annoy us to no end. We start trying to come up with ways that we can get rid of those scars or behaviors so that we don’t have to see them or put up with them any more. Somehow, what was cute has become unpalatable at best, and downright aggravating at worst. Maybe it is a behavior or scar that you never knew about until after you were married, and you begin to feel like you have fallen victim to a “bait & switch”. It may even be something that has developed with age, like knees that don’t work like they used to any more, making certain sexual intimacy positions impossible. However, do not loose heart. If you are both willing to work on your ‘perfect imperfections’, you will often find new and possibly even better ways to overcome those issues.

Both personal experience and more importantly, testimony from the long-timers give witness to the fact, that in very many cases, those cute idiosyncrasies turned perturbances turned “perfect imperfections” become the things that you will miss most when “till death do us part” finally arrives. In the mean time, remember the original attraction you found in them when you first met them.

What ‘perfect imperfections’ do you have? I would love to see your comments, especially about how you found ways to overcome/ignore or otherwise, deal with them. Please comment below.

Ciao, K