I’ve always been shocked and waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop that a girl would ever talk to me, let alone want to marry me. They always seem to hold the power to me, and from my mother to my wife to my daughter, every time I try to really figure them out, and think I’ve got them pegged, I pay for it.

Stanton frames his relationships with women—mother, wife, daughter—as a continuing source of awe, uncertainty, and humility. The “other shoe to drop” idiom signals a persistent sense of unworthiness or disbelief at being chosen, while “they always seem to hold the power” acknowledges how emotional stakes and admiration can invert conventional assumptions about who controls a relationship. The final clause—being “paid for” when he thinks he has women “pegged”—critiques the impulse to reduce people to neat explanations. The quote’s significance lies in its self-deprecating honesty: it suggests that intimacy requires ongoing curiosity and respect, and that overconfidence in “figuring someone out” is both ethically suspect and practically self-defeating.