The concept of the song (as if you couldn't tell from the title) is Meghan is telling her future husband all of the things he has to do to keep her happy as a wife. Paradoxically, most of these "requirements" are super shallow. She doesn't mention things like intellectual stimulation or sexual compatibility or being a good person. The irony is the song makes it out to seem like she has high standards but, in truth, all of the things she mentions are actually pretty easy to achieve. You can find a guy who does all of these things who still turns out to be an asshole. A lot of the lyrics refer to buying her things and taking her out on dates - it doesn't say whether those dates are full of thought-provoking conversation or if he remembers what her favorite flower is when he buys them on their anniversary. The icing on the cake for the first verse, though, is when she asserts that she'll be the perfect wife....and then equates the perfect wife with buying groceries. It's a rather gendered look at what should be a multi-faceted role. And I think that's why many women become unsatisfied in marriage - they are trying to fit a caricature of what they've been told a wife should be, which is largely based on pop culture and their own mother (or other feminine figures in their life). This may or may not be a good recipe.
Moving on to the next verse, which is even more problematic. After every fight/Just apologize....Even if I was wrong/You know I'm never wrong/Why disagree. Hooooo boy! Let's unpack that, shall we? This does not describe healthy conflict within a relationship. At all. As someone who tends to always apologize and try to make amends first, this pattern gets really fucking tiring after a while. First, it begins to feel like you're the only one who is making any effort to compromise. Second, you begin to wonder if the arguments are even necessary in the first place or if the other person is just playing control games. Finally, this dynamic gets boring really quick and you start to question how much effort you should be putting into the relationship. People wear their inability to apologize or hold grudges like a badge of honor, as if it demonstrates their strength of will. As if being obstinate and lacking empathy is something to be proud of. However, the simple truth is if you cannot bring yourself to say the words "I'm sorry" and/or are unwilling to be the first to apologize, you are too emotionally immature to be in a relationship. If you cannot admit when you were wrong, you are not self-aware enough to see the hurt your behavior has caused another. Why would you subject another person to that level of bullshit? What ends up happening is your spouse becomes disempowered and will not voice their opinions, feelings, and needs to avoid conflict because they know they always come out on the losing side. At best, a degree of intimacy is lost and, at worst, the relationship has now entered the realm of being abusive.
And know we'll never see your family more than mine. This lyric has always bothered me because I'm a family-oriented person. I often find myself encouraging my husband to reach out to his family and it's important to me that my son knows both sides of his family. Maybe this might be a personal trigger, because my mom and my maternal grandma always made it seem like it was a competition for our time as kids. It's not - as far as I'm concerned, once you're in my family, I treat you like family - in-laws included. It's not a competition....but it may be a matter of distance or money.
I'll be sleeping on the left side of the bed (hey)
Open doors for me and you might get some kisses
Don't have a dirty mind
Just be a classy guy
Buy me a ring
Buy-buy me a ring, babe
I included the bridge because it's my favorite part. She very narrowly misses a naughty rhyme, which is disappointing. And who says a classy guy can't have a dirty mind? I would prefer both - classy with a dirty mind....and the social intelligence to know when it's appropriate to mix the two.
I've been rambling a lot but I haven't quite gotten to the video yet. Mostly because the video annoys me. She goes out with various guys, each proving how "unfit" they are for the job. But all of them are fairly attractive and try their best to impress her. The first one is a motherfucking chef and he gets kicked to the curb because his portions are too small and she doesn't like scallops (so clearly no fancy restaurants for Meghan). The second guy is axed because he's not strong enough to win a prize for her at the country fair - again, another unfortunate masculine trope. The third guy is thrown overboard (literally) because he tries to get her to participate in rowing a boat on their date. How dare he?!
***SIDE TANGENT: Marriage is, first and foremost, a partnership. In other words, you're a team. I think the quickest way to figure out if you can make it last is if you can complete a project together without killing each other. Even something small will do - building an IKEA dresser or making a three-course-meal for a dinner party. In the ideal scenario, both people play an equal part in producing the final outcome and conflicts are resolved quickly and without dirty tactics (e.g., raised voices or name-calling). No questioning the other person's intelligence or incompetence either - that speaks of other underlying issues. The team challenges on Masterchef are always nerve-racking to watch but the thing to understand is the dynamic you think is going to fail - two confident, opinionated people - is usually the most successful. The teams with two quiet, insecure people or one domineering person with one subservient person usually fail. It's because two confident people aren't afraid to communicate with each other and roles/responsibilities are usually hashed out quickly, with very little conflict. With one domineering person and one subservient person, the domineering person assumes from the get-go that they'll have to do everything, doesn't trust the other person to fulfill their responsibilities and treats them accordingly. Because they're being treated as incompetent from the get-go, the subservient person usually gets flustered and ends up acting in exactly the way the domineering person assumed they would. With two quiet, insecure people, they're too polite to tell the other person they're doing something wrong because they don't want to cause conflict (they see conflict as "bad"). To the outside world, it may look like their partnership is harmonious but the end result doesn't work because they were too insecure to work out the obvious problems. In a partnership, both people need to be good leaders AND good followers - and know what role they're fulfilling and when. Whew! That side tangent took longer than I expected. What can I say? I love group dynamics!***
Back to the video - so Meghan has these three excellent suitors knocking at her door and each one has some horrendous flaw that disqualifies them. The entire time, she's looking through some app at all the other guys she could be dating. And then Mr. Right shows up - and this is the part that is so utterly disappointing. The guy at the end is the most average looking bro I have ever seen. He might as well be named Chad. Even the barbershop quartet guys are hotter by comparison. And he brings a pizza. It doesn't even look like good pizza - it looks like motherfucking Papa John's. Which just goes to show there's no accounting for taste. Or maybe she understands that the song is perpetuating toxic social norms and subverted them by choosing the guy that seems the most likely to not conform to her requirements. Maybe? Nah.
"Dear Future Husband" Video
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