Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough

Atlantic Monthly ^ | March 2008 | Lori Gottlieb

[reaganaut1]

About six months after my son was born, he and I were sitting on a blanket at the park with a close friend and her daughter. It was a sunny summer weekend, and other parents and their kids picnicked nearby—mothers munching berries and lounging on the grass, fathers tossing balls with their giddy toddlers. My friend and I, who, in fits of self-empowerment, had conceived our babies with donor sperm because we hadn’t met Mr. Right yet, surveyed the idyllic scene.

“Ah, this is the dream,” I said, and we nodded in silence for a minute, then burst out laughing. In some ways, I meant it: we’d both dreamed of motherhood, and here we were, picnicking in the park with our children. But it was also decidedly not the dream. The dream, like that of our mothers and their mothers from time immemorial, was to fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).

[edcoil]

Its a question to ask yourself.

[JackDanielsOldNo7]

For one thing, studies have shown they have better sex lives than single people.

After the last two nights, I say this is true. :>))

[Froufrou]

I understand that, but you’re leaving out the obvious: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[LucyT]

Marry the person you could not spend the rest of your life WITHOUT.

Good advice.

[CSM]

I’m glad to hear that I’m not alone in that feeling. Thanks for the confirmation that I’m not crazy.

[najida]

Erm,
a,
no....

Not the ones that I’m talking about-—

The biggest common denominator is they are very good in bed (seems to be a common complaint amoungst even freeper wives-— some guys just don’t get what good sex is to a woman)

The guys in these books do.

[null and void]

No self respecting man wants to provide for the progeny of another. He won’t love the progeny of another the way that he loves his own. He won’t make the sacrifices for the progeny of another the way he will for his own.

Then I guess I'm not self respecting.

[Bitsy]

I kinda like my own company :)

[Pistolshot]

However, I’ve had some women break it off very early because I wasn’t acting fast enough.

Those are the types to be very afraid of. They are using the sex to pin you down, possess you and will make your life miserable when you spurn them.

[edcoil]

We are not talking about looks at all. I am talking about each person as a human being and the values they live by.

btw, beauty maybe in the eye of the beholder but ugly, is to the bone.

[Tax-chick]

You have to be able to function without it-— give it away yes, but you can’t be so hungry for it that you’ll take crumbs when you deserve the whole cake.

Great observation.

[najida]

Oh,
and these guys are bloody, muddy, hairy, scarred macho....we ain’t talkin’ suits (OK, so I just read all of JRW’s BDB over the weekend).

[Froufrou]

Ugly IS to the bone. And very often it is the most physically beautiful who are the ugliest inside.

[CSM]

“They are using the sex to pin you down, possess you and will make your life miserable when you spurn them.”

You are 100% correct and it is definitely a lessoned learned. I will never repeat that mistake again.

[Post Toasties]

Perhaps, but you will hardly find many guys who will sacrifice their lives because they won’t ‘settle’ for less then their ‘Playboy Centerfold Dream Girl’.

[TalonDJ]

I am a very strong believer that the worst thing anyone can do is think they HAVE to find love. You have to be able to function without it-—

Oh I totally agree there. I worked hard to be where I was happy not being married before ever found Jen. I knew there were things I wanted out of marriage but I wanted to be happy with who I was and more or less where I was. Having achieved that and then not settling on the woman part made it so getting married was actually a surprisingly small change in life in general. Not small, but smaller than I expected or had been lead to believe. If you have to change your whole life and everything you do in order to be married then you are not likely to be happy. Of course that does not count the things you ADD to your life or reprioritzations. It was not that I was unwilling to change a lot. It was that by not setting on the actual things that really mattered I did not have to.

As much as I like the sound of 'find that person you can't live without' I did not do that at all. Pretty much the reverse. I think that might work differently depending on what age you get married.

[Mr. Jeeves]

It’s hardly an original observation, but just as important as marrying, not THE right person, but A right person (there are a lot of Right People out there) is being, or becoming, a right person.

Pat yourself on the back, you are the only one who got it. That's what's missing from all of these threads - the fundamental truth that you can't change anyone else, you have to change yourself. By doing so you will naturally attract people more like the improved you into your life, and naturally repel the problem people. If you think your life is going to be made better by someone else if you can just trick them into liking you long enough to put a ring on your finger, there's no hope for you. You can't trick even the densest person into loving you for more than a few months. You have to continue to grow and be worthy of it. Love is a decision you have to make all over again each morning - but nobody wants to accept that.

And sitting around complaining about how bad the opposite sex behaves just guarantees that you will attract nothing but spectacularly bad specimens. ;)

[TalonDJ]

Guys are not born knowing that. They need hints. Of course communication is key. If you ain’t talking about the issue then it is not changing.

[najida]

Again,
an observation-— a good friend and I have had very similar lives. She’s married, but it’s a huge struggle for her to be happy in marriage, her basic instinct is for seperation-— her hubby can’t fathom why marriage isn’t the perfect state. But he got it honest....

Her FIL is someone who married purely to have a ‘female in the house’....he could not stand being alone after his wife died. So he dated and he found a woman who wanted to be married.

Sadly, he was this super-modern, neat, everything in it’s place person and he’s found himself married to a woman who loves doilies and pot pourri. He’s miserable. But he married out of fear.

The reasons for marriage is far more important than the emotions.

[William Terrell]

Unfortunately for a growing number of women, men are increasingly afraid of marrying them. The laws, you know, the one that were supposed to empower women.

If anyone were, for example, presented with a contract, a court supported feature of which was one party could, at any time, shoot the other party dead with no consequences, the reluctance to enter into it would increase with the body count.