When I married at 18, my image of what a husband was like was based on my father. Strong, gentle, humorous, courtly toward women, tender toward his wife and affectionate to his children: that’s what a grown-up man was like.

So when I married, that’s what I expected my husband would be like too,. Naturally he would take care of the heavy work; he would appreciate everything I did for him; there would be an ongoing, two-way conversation with him about the incidental and important matters of everyday life. In my childhood it was these conversations between my parents, heard in the distance from the breakfast table, the living room, the front porch, that made me feel the most safe and protected and happy.

My mother was cherished. She kept our house clean and the meals delicious, not out of obligation but out of love for my father and for us, and because he appreciated her so. She made up games for our chores, sang with us when we were riding in the car, took us to Sunday School and taught there herself, and read to us every night,. I fondly believed I would do these things too, not understanding yet that, except for the singing and reading, they weren’t as easy as they looked.

My new husband, who was only 19, had no such images governing his behavior. His father was a farmer, transplanted into town and a laborer’s job on the railroad—silent, stubborn, interested only in his garden and his chair by the heater. My new mother-in-law worked hard too, but her expectations were low; there was no singing, no reading, no fun. Instead, she peered out of her windows and muttered about what the neighbors were doing, or sat at the table and gossiped about them. Any conversations my husband remembered between those two were likely to have been grumpy and short.

So when we married our expectations collided. I kept looking for and waiting for behavior that was not forthcoming; my husband was doing the same. Our first clash set the tone for all that was to come. The little house we lived in had a coal stove, for heating and cooking. We had both grown up with coal stoves, but in my family the father always got up first and built the fire, and in my husband’s family it was the mother’s job. I remember my shock that he expected me to do it, and he lost some illusions then as well.

I soon learned too that he didn’t like sweets and therefore had no use for my best cooking accomplishments, the pies and cakes and cobblers my father had loved. Even more painful was the discovery that he had little talent for conversation and even less interest in it. As revelation followed revelation, disappointment seeped into me and before that first winter was over, I was regretting my rush into the domestic experience. I know he had his regrets as well, but he didn’t complain. Fortunately, children were eventually born. Both of us found parenthood challenging, but not disappointing at all.

And so we finished growing up, together. As our marriage progressed, our expectations changed to fit our experience and we became the adults that our children would remember when they married. But our core selves remained the ones who had grown up with our own parents. Our work styles, our philosophies, our ways of being with our children reflected what we had learned before we had any basis for comparison. But we became a family for all time, our traits combined in descendants who will go on and on into the future.