by Polana Fehu

Created on: June 13, 2009   Last Updated: June 19, 2009

THE PERFECT MAN.

A cursory glance at the articles in any woman's magazine will tell you how to have the perfect relationship. How to mould your man into the way you want him. There's an old adage that says that men want their wives to stay the same as the day they met them whilst women set out from day one to change their husbands. There's something in that.

I used to get my sewing box out every time I lost a button or a hem came down and mend it quickly. I was taught as a child that 'a stitch in time saves nine.'

But I have stopped doing that, stopped trying to make everything perfect. Stopped wondering what perfect is. If a button falls off, maybe they'll all fall off and the look and use of the garment will change. If a hem comes down on a pair of trousers, then they will simply be an inch longer and drag in the mud, fray at the back and become my most worn, most favourite trousers, now that the expectation is not on them to be my smartest and neatest pair. Walk along the street and look at the trousers of anyone under the age of twenty and you'll see just how fashionable this look has become. It doesn't matter if your jeans are frayed.

And relationships - who says my man needs to be trained to fit into my expectations of him? Haven't we fought for years to be independent as women of the expectations of men? Don't we balk at the idea that we need to get the house clean and tidy, make his dinner, warm his slippers and still find time to make our selves alluring before he walks in the door? A roar of laughter goes up at the mere suggestion. Yet we let the media give us an image of a perfect man and instructions on how to make one, starting with the imperfect one we already have.

It's not enough to blame the women's magazines there must be a demand otherwise they would not sell any copies. What is a perfect relationship? Do we need perfection? Aren't human beings, by their very nature, imperfect? And isn't this a good thing?

I could give you a list of 'complaints' about my partner I hear women doing it all the time but that would only work if I felt he was imperfect, or lacking in any way. He's not. If I find myself stressing that he left the lid off the margarine, I stop, and remember that such things are not important to him, so they don't need to be to me. I just put the lid on and put it away myself. To him, there are more important things to worry about, global issues and matters of conscience and overall fairness in the world. I am learning to be less focused on the minutiae of everyday life and more aware of the bigger picture.

Perhaps it is I who is not perfect. Maybe he is training me. If he remembers to put the milk away or pick up his dirty socks and I remember the names of the hostages recently released in the Middle East, and the amount of time we have before there is no more iridium left in the world then we may be getting somewhere.

And I haven't yet seen a women's magazine that talks about that.

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