5 Women Break Their Own Rules

"I will never marry someone who doesn't fit my checklist."

"I swore I would never date -- much less marry -- a man who was shorter than me," says five-foot-eight-and-a-half Jennifer Toth, a 31-year-old grad student in Weehawken, New Jersey. "The idea drilled into my head by my friends and my mom was: The guy has to be taller than the girl." Jennifer dated a series of lanky men in college, but when it came to intelligence and personality, none of them measured up to her platonic friend Joseph, who at five feet three inches barely grazed her shoulders. "Joseph was compassionate and funny and had beautiful brown eyes," Jennifer says. "But I couldn't quiet the voice in my head saying, 'What will people think?'"

After six months of friendship, Jennifer and Joseph began a cautious romance. Even as their relationship grew, Jennifer admits that it took at least two years for her to completely banish her misgivings about their height difference. "Eventually I realized that Joseph was everything I had ever wanted, just in a smaller package." So in the fall of 2001, towering over him in heels and poufy hair, Jennifer married Joseph. "Standing at the altar, I thought, This is the greatest thing I've ever done. I knew his height no longer mattered."

Lesson Learned: Don't try to please everyone else. Some nevers grow from a deep place within your soul, but others are implanted early on by outside forces, like the media, your friends and, yes, your mother -- and those are the most negotiable. So how do you clear out the clutter and focus on what's right for you? "Ask yourself, 'If I lived on another planet where no one else would ever see me, would I want to marry this man or take this job or live this life?'" suggests Dana Lightman, PhD, a psychotherapist in Philadelphia and author of POWER Optimism (Power Optimism, 2004). "If the answer is yes, then you should take that path and focus on what makes you happy."