Two little stories here.
My sister and her old boyfriend looked great together, the couple that everyone admired—picture perfect. Turned out that was obsessively important to him. When she finally wanted to break up with him, he wouldn’t let go. Didn’t until she gained about 100 pounds (not even realizing at the time that that was why she did it). It took her 3 years to finish paying the price of his obsession.
My brother married someone who decided to improve his style. Granted, there was plenty of room for improvement because she was really into fashion and he dressed like a vagrant. Smart, well educated, and well employed, but he didn’t care how he looked. She fixed that. Even made him pluck his fierce eyebrows. My husband said, “He can’t keep that up. One of these days there’s going to be an explosion, and boom, he’ll be back the way he was.” Well, of course she wanted to remake him in a lot more ways than that. When the explosion finally came, they had a house and kids to deal with. She’s gone now, and he let his eyebrows grow back.
This might sound obvious, @needle, but why don’t you take a look at some couples who have really lasted? We can’t all look like Paul and Joanne (or Zac and Vanessa), but there are plenty of enduring marriages around. I know one long-wedded couple, for example, where he is built like a parade balloon, and she is definitely bonsai, but she looks about 20 years older than he does. If they were choices in a matching game you would never put them together. Yet they’ve been married more than 30 years and still seem to dote on one another.
Here’s something to think about. What exists between two people is something that only they will ever really know. The view from inside a couple is never like the view from outside. And it’s the view from inside that matters.