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 ...
Probably because she lets you be the man, i.e., she probably follows your lead, and doesn’t tell you what to do. She also sounds like she’s easy to be with.
You are probably the kind of man whose actions match his words. You never gave her a reason to doubt your affection and commitment.
This is how it works, and to accept less is a serious mistake leading to a very unhappy marriage.
I’m glad you found your special wife. Congratulations! :-)
When you boil the idiot checkout line women's magazine sh*t out of it, it is just selfishness and infantile narcissism. American women have the best life of any demographic in the history of the world, all made possible by well-meaning men.
This only works if a great majority of women refuse premarital sex. Then, women have a cartel, and the value of a relationship with them goes up. That cartel started breaking up in the 60s, I think.
Right on Brother! A woman who thinks like this thinks her stuff doesn't stink, probably liberal too.
Well, yes. I'm the wage-earner and she stays home with our infant son. But there's a great deal of mutual respect. She implores me to mind my language, not drink too much, go to church on Sunday and generally has made me a better person. On the weekends, I'll help her clean and take care of the baby. It's much the way I was raised so it's an arrangement that I'm familiar with. She has a husband who comes home after work, isn't angry, bitter or violent and hasn't squandered the day's wages at the pub each evening, which is what she'd likely have if she stayed in Ukraine.
You never gave her a reason to doubt your affection and commitment.
Never. And she's never given me reason to doubt her commitment as well. Having a relationship without mind games is wonderful, healthy thing. My wife is everything to me and I don't know what I'd do without her. I know I'd definitely be a lesser man.
I’m glad you found your special wife. Congratulations! :-)
Thank you. I'm happy. She's happy. Our son is happy. Everything is well.
Of course, there's still a stigma associated with American men who marry foreigners as somehow losers who can't attract an American girl and the wives they marry are nothing but opportunists looking for a ticket out of the misery they live in. This is fed by the all-too-common image in the media of the paunchy, balding 50-something American man and his nubile Russian party-girl bride, barely out of her teens, who was basically 'purchased" to be a sex-slave that cooks and cleans. I cringe and roll my eyes when I see this portrayed as the typical arrangement and dearly hope it's not.
As a woman I agree with you. There is no perfect person ever. Too many women today want perfect and do employ a check list. Too many of them find themselves over 35 and still single. IMHO let the guy chase you for a while there is something to be said about allowing the man to be the hunter, it’s instinct.Enjoying the good traits and learning to overlook the not so good is the way to stay married for a long time.The trick is to identify what you can live with and overlook before getting married!
And I’m not saying it’s not a challenge to find someone you can live with, on either side. It’s just this entitlement mentality that is being sold and women are buying more and more.
It doesn’t help either that in the culture the feminist agenda to derail men as competent, good parents, good husbands, and the active discouragement of them in school, the feminization of the public schools and getting rid of male teachers at all levels (thus getting rid of more potential good role models and authority figures) aren’t helping things to turn boys into solid men either. Our culture is doing its best to denigrate men, lower their standards and expectations and replacing adult men with “the government” as provider and benefactor, of all races and colors.
The women buying into this whole ‘settling’ thing automatically are assuming they are pretty much flawless, at least with respect to any man they might end up with. Falls right in line with the rest of the junk being pushed against men. They don’t even know they’re just being used. And why not? It’s a really pleasant lie to believe.
Ava Gabor said;
Marry for love; and keep marrying until you find it.
Hence the increasing number of 35-year old "men" trapped in a two decade long "extended adolescence", wearing the same clothes, listening to the same music, watching the same TV shows and movies and playing the same video games as teenage boys twenty years their junior.
No matter how pretty she is, or how good in bed she is, some guy, out there somewhere, is tired of her shit...
It’s like that with everyone.
Everyone has lines they just won’t cross, or something that makes a person say “This just isn’t worth it.” What those lines are and how much one will take before hitting that point vary greatly.
I think we all need to come with the same kinds of warnings they put on various medicines, along the lines of “Your Results May Vary.”
I agree with you. I was referring to the women out there who think they are “all that.” Been there, done that.
I’ve had 3 serious, multi-year relationships in my adult life. I tried my best in all of them. I told them up front, don’t threaten me, don’t belittle me, and don’t embarass me in public. They all did to an extent. They all also seemed surprised as hell when I walked. I told them in the beginning and I told them at the end - If I don’t like the movie, I get up and leave. None of them listened.
WRT the poster with the foreign-born wife, I also had friends from my Navy days who married foreigners. A nice looking girl (Barbie-type) asked me at a party why one of my friends just had to “bring one home with him?” I looked at her and said “You would be the perfect reason.” Evening went down hill from there.
No sane man would want to marry a woman whose worldview is formed primarily from the degenerate sewage pumped out by Hollyweird and the popular culture.
Most people do form their worldviews based on TV. Politics, dating, how to raise children... People perceive what they see on TV as what is normal, acceptable and even expected.
Humans are a group animal. We are affected by those around us. And the vast majority of people look to the fictional people on TV in the same way as they looked to and adapted to get along with their neighbours in previous times. Such is human nature, and such is the power we have given to the hippies...
You’re right about sane men of course.
Of course, there's still a stigma associated with American men who marry foreigners as somehow losers who can't attract an American girl and the wives they marry are nothing but opportunists looking for a ticket out of the misery they live in.
Maybe that attitude floats around in some places, but I'm in NYC. EVERYBODY lives here! LOL! Your marriage would not seem out of place.
I cringe and roll my eyes when I see this portrayed as the typical arrangement and dearly hope it's not.
And 2 seconds later, your attention is back on your family, because you're just too happy and blessed to care what others may think. Right? :-)
P.S.: I've known many Ukrainians. Lovely people. And they make such beautiful Easter Eggs (I have a few).
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