Standard wisdom suggests that women marry men expecting them to change and find they don’t, while men marry women expecting them not to change and find they do. There must be a trick, then, of prognostication required in choosing a wife. Find someone whose character and personality will allow permutations you can live with, and marry them.

Standard wisdom also suggests that, since you cannot find perfection, search for one whose faults you can live with. (Indeed, my mother has told me that, like not joining the perfect church, if you find the perfect girl, don’t date her: you’ll spoil her. Contrariwise, if I find the perfect girl, there will be no stopping my taking a fair shot at her.) However, since at some point, the girl to whom you are married will no longer be the girl you married, you must not only find someone whose faults you can live with, but with whose possible and probable faults you can as well.

We’ve got it tough, haven’t we? (Though I imagine the ladies have just as difficult a time of it.)

*****

Few men worship women anymore; I suppose that, as I am in many other things, I am one of the old guard. I received a response to my piece, “All Things Feminine”, which contained the following: “Women are beauty, and they deserve our worship.”

Not only are they beauty, but there is something else in the feminine which is worshipable, yet ineffable — undefinable.

However, finding a woman worthy of worship, worthy of my consecration and expense as a votary at the temple of SHE — this is hard. How much harder will it be to find one who will maintain her deity for my lifetime?