My friend and I have this theory that goes something like this: You date/marry someone who is better than you in some way. Not all ways, just some. People don’t marry their equals. There is no equality in relationships.  I’m fairly sure it would be a pretty boring life to marry your exact equal. The whole equal partnership idea is a sham.

Think about it, what qualities do you admire in your mate?  I admire my husbands ability to quietly navigate social situations, his ability to objectively see problems and their solutions, and his warped sense of humor, All of them not things that I possess. OK, my humor IS warped in many ways, but just different ways than Cole.

This coupling with your “better half” (I really hate that term) becomes a wonderful thing of course, a compliment to your skill set or a benchmark to help better yourself.  Except when it doesn’t. These same traits that we are with them for, the ones we admire, the ones we don’t possess or only possess to a lesser degree. These traits are the ones that infuriate us when they fall below the high bar we have set for our mate regardless if we could have reached it or not.

Is it right to hold our mates up to these double standards? Probably not. But how many of us recognize that it’s exactly what we are doing? Guess that equality is a tough one. It’s just a theory, but I think that we’re onto something.

What do you think about that?