Women tend to choose husbands who resemble their fathers, says a survey. And men choose women who are like their mothers.
It makes sense, doesn’t it?
Man or woman, if you are already on familiar ground, you can adjust faster, adapt more easily and make accommodations that you are already accustomed to making.
Your shikari (hunter) father did not want to discuss the poor marksmanship that allowed his “game” to get away during duck season and you and your siblings spent some Sundays walking on eggshells around him, so you can understand when your tennis-playing husband feels he has played poorly or you can adapt when he reacts a bit differently and wants to discuss every stroke, every ball. It’s all about a sport, isn’t it?
And his meticulous doctor mother made sure her children knew a little bit of first aid, while your conscientious teacher mother paid what you considered “undue” attention to your lessons.
But what happens when you find yourself with someone who is very different from your sporty father or your committed mother? How do you react when you tread on unfamiliar ground through every moment of some three or four or five decades? I guess studies are going on somewhere and results will be out one of these days to enlighten us and help us deal with what we are up against.
Until then, those of us who have chosen partners who are quite unlike our fathers/mothers will just have to muddle along.
Or they can admit, like I do, that I chose someone as different as possible from my father because I just could not handle any more of the same thing!
Therefore, after living with an enthusiastic botanist-gardener father with green fingers, thumbs and toes, and having had to eat our way through the overabundant produce of his vegetable “patch” until we had white pumpkin or broad beans or eggplant coming out of our ears, I delighted in a person who had no interest in growing things, did not insist on living in a bungalow with a profusion of greenery around and seemed content with a little apartment on the first floor with no garden space at all, and just an occasional trip to the vegetable vendor down the road to fulfil our requirements.
What a relief not to be called out to admire each leaf and bud as it sprouted! How easy to keep that small ivory tower clean when there are no globs of mud all over the drawing room floor as handfuls of crotons and flowers are pushed into vases and bowls and a few days later dead leaves and petals fly around and have to be swept up and discarded.
My patient and long-suffering mother would raise her eyes and pray for strength to get through the day with Mother Nature barging into her house, but I was sure I would blow all my fuses with just one such incident, let alone a lifetime of it.
It was a huge relief, therefore, to discover that my spouse had no annoying pastimes or hobbies and instead liked to spend most of his free time asleep. He did not brim over with enthusiasm, like my father did, about all the creatures he saw in the vicinity, especially those of the slippery, slithery variety. He did not drag me out to admire the Russell’s viper or the spectacled cobra inches away from the doorstep — instead, if one of them visited, he could always be shaken awake to help save the day!
But I was not aware that he had an in-built sleep-o-meter — and perhaps to prevent me from getting too complacent about his availability, I found it was not easy to awaken my personal version of Rip Van Winkle!
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.
