If she can’t cook she ain’t wife material, and if he isn’t at least 5ft10 it’s obviously not gonna work out.

Wife material and husband material: it seems you’re it or you’re not.

In candidly dissecting both it’s fair to note that ‘wife-material’ standards tend to sexualise or objectify women and/or make high demands of them that are near unreasonable. Many men insist that a wife-able woman must know her way around the kitchen, be motherly, doting, domesticated, intelligent and independent, but pliant in the bedroom.

Most seem to want a woman to work 9-5 but have dinner ready when they get home from their 9-5 (with a smile too, please.)

Husband material is a little less specific and leans more to being a bit of a preference list. Hence some girls’ adamance that hubby or bae has got to be at least x height, and somehow both bad enough to be attractive but good and gentle once they’ve had enough of the ‘bad’ traits they earlier found attractive.

When all is said and done, perhaps the greater issue is that persons are projecting their own personal desires and wish lists when shopping for a partner, onto others.

So what if she can’t cook and that’s a deal breaker for you? That’s all it is – a deal breaker for YOU.

He’s not the ‘perfect’ height? On to the next one for you.

Someone’s failure to be perfectly on par with your ideal or wishlist doesn’t mean they’re any less as a person. They might just be wife-material or husband-material for someone else.

And one’s worth (self or otherwise) ought not to rest on something so trivial as another person’s perception.