People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the irony of how people often take more time and care in selecting casual items than in choosing life partners.
Erma Bombeck's quote points out a common paradox in human behavior, suggesting that individuals often invest more thought and effort into choosing superficial items, like bathing suits, compared to the significant choice of a spouse. By encouraging a thoughtful selection process for whom we partner with, the quote emphasizes the importance of comfort, adaptability, and long-term satisfaction in relationships, mirroring how we might approach wardrobe choices.
In practice
During a wedding speech, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of careful consideration in choosing a life partner.
We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache' cases and our three piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.
You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the American family. Families aren't dying. They're merging into big conglomerates.
Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It's the only thing "real" men do that doesn't seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it's on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.
Not everyone is comfortable with the kissing ritual. My husband is one of them. Her refuses to press lips with anyone except his wife, mother, and dog. If someone wanted to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he would refuse until he had been formally introduced.
There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
Maybe age is kinder to us than we think. With my bad eyes, I can't see how bad I look, and with my rotten memory, I have a good excuse for getting out of a lot of stuff.
She gathers my half of the blankets around her and curls up against the wall. She will sleep for hours more, dreaming endless landscapes and novas of colour both gorgeous and frightening. If I stayed she would wake up and describe them to me. All the mad plot twists and surrealist imagery, so vivid to her while so meaningless to me. There was a time when I treasured listening to her, when I found the commotion in her soul bitter-sweet and lovely, but I can no longer bear it.
I am not sure that the inner world of teenage girls has changed. What's most important to kids today is still the same stuff.
The struggle between Israelis and Palestinians is a perfect reflection of the struggle between fear and forgiveness that rages within us all.
The idea that a book can advise a woman how to capture a man is touchingly naive. Books advising men how to capture a woman are far less common, perhaps because few men are willing to admit to such a difficulty. For both sexes, I recommend a good novel, offering scenarios you might learn from, if only because they reflect a lot of doubt.
I'm definitely drawn to stories about outsiders. Feeling like that myself as a gay black man, I often seek to give a voice to those in the world who don't have one.
The secret of a happy marriage is to serve God and each other. The goal of marriage is unity and oneness, as well as self-development. Paradoxically, the more we serve one another, the greater is our spiritual and emotional growth.
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