Before I got married, I had a list. Not a vision board, not a manifestation journal, and definitely not a carefully curated Pinterest board, thank God, because Pinterest wasn’t around yet. I had five requirements for the man I would eventually marry: he needed a good job, no kids, good credit, his own place, and he had to be at least a foot taller than me.

Listen, I was serious about that last one. At 5’2″, finding someone a foot taller wasn’t exactly asking the universe for an NBA player, but height was on the list right alongside financial responsibility and independence. I wasn’t negotiating it.

Then I met Fred.

And Fred checked every box.

Nearly twenty years of marriage later, I’ve been thinking about that list and about how incredibly practical and completely inadequate it was. Apparently, younger Wanda thought she could conduct due diligence on a husband. Job? Check. Credit? Check. Apartment? Check. Kids? None. Height? Come here, sir. Let me get the measuring tape.

What wasn’t on my list was how he handled disappointment. How we’d make decisions when we disagreed. Whether we’d dream about the future the same way. What kind of father he’d become. How we’d handle money once his and mine became ours. How we’d survive the seasons when marriage felt easy and the ones when it absolutely did not.

I didn’t know to ask those questions yet. I was choosing a husband based on what I understood about life at the time. And maybe that’s what all of us do.

Then, the Other Night

Two nights ago, Fred came into my room and hugged me. Nothing dramatic had happened. No grand romantic gesture came with it. He simply wrapped his arms around me, and my face landed against his chest, almost exactly where his heart was beating.

His arms surrounded me. And standing there, tucked against him, I felt safe, protected, and engulfed, like nothing in the world could get to me while I was there.

And suddenly I remembered why he had to be tall.

“I had written ‘a foot taller than me’ on a checklist when what I was really trying to write was: I want to feel safe in his arms.”

I don’t think younger Wanda knew how to say that. Maybe she didn’t even consciously understand that’s what she was looking for. She just knew how she wanted something to feel.

That’s the funny thing about hindsight. Sometimes you finally understand decisions you made decades ago and realize you were asking for something much deeper than you had the language to explain.

The List After Twenty Years

If you asked me today what should be on a checklist for a husband, mine would look very different. Not because those original things didn’t matter, they did. Good credit becomes pretty damn important when you’re applying for a mortgage. A job matters when there are four people depending on a household. Independence matters. Compatibility matters.

And yes, I’m keeping tall. Leave me alone.

But twenty years of marriage has taught me that you cannot put everything you’ll eventually need from another human being onto five lines of paper. You’re not only choosing the person standing in front of you. You’re choosing someone who will change, while knowing that you will change too.

The woman who married Fred isn’t exactly the woman writing this today. She’s still in here. I recognize her, and in some ways I understand her better now. But she’s lived a lot of life since she made that list. She’s become a wife and a mother. She’s built things and lost things. She’s gotten things terribly wrong. She’s learned what she needs, what she can tolerate, what she shouldn’t tolerate, and what she still doesn’t completely understand.

Fred has changed too. That’s the part nobody can put on a premarital checklist. Marriage isn’t just Did I choose the right person? Eventually the question becomes, Who have we become since we chose each other?

“Twenty years later, I’m learning that some of the reasons I married him weren’t written on my list at all. They were hiding underneath it.”

Why I Married Him

I could give you a much more sophisticated answer today. I could talk about compatibility, values and partnership. I could tell you stories about our marriage, the beautiful ones, the ridiculous ones, and the ones that took some work to survive.

But two nights ago, none of that was going through my head.

I was simply standing in my room with my husband’s arms around me, five-foot-two Wanda tucked against this tall man’s chest, listening to his heart. And for a moment, the woman I am now understood the woman who wrote that list all those years ago.

Oh. That’s why I married him.

All my love,

Wanda ❤️