You tell it, girlfriend. That's why I've remained single...well no more. I'm going to settle for the first guy that boils my Ovaltine. Watch out, boys...here I come!"
Posted on 02/13/2010 9:42:19 AM PST by reaganaut1
Lori Gottlieb offers herself up as Exhibit A — that’s A for “Alone” — in this unsparing exploration of the contemporary mating scene. Part cautionary memoir, part field study, her account of her own stalled search for a husband is honest and darkly comic.
While many books about relationships flatter women and promote strategies to attract elusive men — don’t sleep with him, let him “chase you till you catch him” — Gottlieb asks readers to reconsider the less-than-perfect men who are available to them, and to do so while still young enough to close the deal.
Like many of us, Gottlieb went shopping with a mental checklist of attributes for her fantasy husband. Believing that the One was at large, she squandered opportunities with seemingly flawed, flesh-and-blood men.
Expanding on a provocative article she wrote for The Atlantic Monthly in 2008, and interviewing, among many others, therapists, members of the clergy, and both single and married people, Gottlieb makes a case that many women today end up alone because they hold men to insanely high standards. The feminist ideal of having it all, on our own terms, she argues, “is exactly how many of us empowered ourselves out of a good mate.”
The author treads good-naturedly over taboos, asking whether the “Go, girl!” ethos has run amok and our hard-won professional identities have become lonely traps. While she believes the workplace can be a fertile hunting ground, she also notes that men are often less impressed than we expect by our brilliant careers.
Gottlieb’s triumph of experience over hope is not as depressing as it sounds. She skewers herself and her post-feminist peers so accurately and disarmingly that we wish we knew an unattached man to fix her up with.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The idea of marrying someone for what today is called ‘love’ is really just infactuation. Infactuation does not last and basing your idea of who to marry on good sex also doesn’t last.
When reading history I noticed that men and women used to marry for the purpose of helping each other through life and supportig their families. It was an unselfish dedication to the marriage and the kids, something that today is somehow looked down upon, but I applaud the men and women who did this. Life is hard and a good partner, an honest one, is to be valued.
And dedication to God had a lot to do with it.
Just the nature/premise of the article pisses me off.
Guys aren’t perfect. Oh woe is me, I won’t get a guy there’s nothing wrong with. I’ll have to SETTLE.
Gals, EVERYONE settles. You aren’t perfect either. The whole idea of this article is overly self-involved, oh my, how does this affect ME? What a narcissistic way to waltz through life. Like you have to - sigh - resign yourself to settling for less than MR Perfect. Mr. Perfect doesn’t exist. Neither are you Ms. Perfect. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Our culture is programming people to think they can have, even DESERVE, to have it all, and if you don’t, you’re being shafted somehow.
The marriage isn’t going smoothly? Divorce his butt. Take half his stuff, find a better guy. You deserve it. The Sharper Image nose trimmer doesn’t catch every last hair up there? Obviously you made a mistake selecting your significant other. Time to go.
If men bitched about all the things that are “wrong” with their women the way women do, or kept track of all their shortcomings in their heads to bring up at future arguments, nobody would ever get married.
That's the problem right there.
Who the heck would want to marry a femi-Nazi wacko anyways?
Of course these women are unhappy. No man can compete with the "richness" of Uncle Sam.
As a survivor of the singles scene (until 1997), let me say that all the complaints I heard about men - immaturity, lack of commitment, insecurity, shallowness - are commonly found in today’s single woman, too. Add to that an incredible sense of entitlement next to an incredible sense of victimization, and, quite often, a complete disregard for moral virtue and ethical conduct. It’s a horror. I’m working with me son right now to prepare him to deal with the users, sociopaths, verbal abusers, and gender feminists out there so he can find the kind of balanced, intelligent, kind, loving woman like his mom - who are also out there.
Gottlieb’s article misses the point. A lot of women who are being too picky about superficial things do so because they are superficial themselves. Like I said, it’s a horror out there right now.
Why would any decent man ever sleep with a woman who would kill his child?
This is what's behind the whole concept of marriage - you learn to grow together and adapt to each other.
If you spend time wondering if you've found the "perfect" mate you will spend the rest of your life alone because there's always something that you could point at and say, "I am not going to marry him/her because he/she ......!"
Lots of times you don't find out till afterward.
That's why they call it "casual".
That's why it's important to get to know someone before getting too involved. Once an emotional commitment is made, character flaws are overlooked.
I suspect most of these women would be perfectly content if they’d face up to the fact that they don’t really *want* to be married. Or at least if they had faced up to that fact much earlier in their lives, before wasting countless years on the “dating scene” and dreaming of happily-ever-after fairy-tale marriages like the ones featured in the movies and novels they devour.
For the most part, men know what they are doing. If they are truly into a woman, they will do and be much greater for her than if they are not. The majority of men want to be heroes to their women IF they are into them to begin with.
Too many women settle for guys who aren’t into them. And too many women have sex because they feel like it. If women grew up and refused pre-marital sex, men would follow suit.
I really don't want to turn this into an "American-woman bashing" exercise but, quite frankly, I got tired of dealing with American women who always seemed to be looking around the corner for something better while at the same time making me feel inferior. In the navy, I discovered foreign women and my entire mindset changed. Eventually, I met a lovely young Ukrainian and traveled overseas to get married. We've been together six years and are approaching our five year anniversary and I couldn't be happier. I've found in my foreign wife the comfortable, relaxed companionship devoid of game playing that always eluded me when dating American women.
Good points. Girls today are extremely critical of the men in their lives.
I suspect that the views and attitudes of so many American women today are what has fueled the “mail order bride” trend, in which American men are wanting to marry women from other cultures. American women are agahst that men would want to go to the former Soviet Union or the Phillipines to find a wife, but growing numbers are doing so.
Women marry men they think they can change. Men marry women they think will stay the same.
Nice post. Two thumbs up.
You broke the rules posting graphic fotos on FR....
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