Lisa Gottlieb answers the age-old question, Is it better to be alone, or to settle?
My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion
or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of
yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal
sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in
place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my
observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the
long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become
more disillusioned with each passing year. (It’s hard to maintain that
level of zing when the conversation morphs into discussions about who’s changing the diapers or balancing the checkbook.)
Apt. 11d 
The answer to the age-old question is: nobody knows. Some people settle and are miserable. Some people find passion and are miserable. Some people don’t find anyone and are miserable. Same thing for happiness.
As a single person who found passion but didn’t marry (not my decision!), and could have settled and didn’t marry (my decision), my answer is: nobody knows. The truth is that even at my most miserable I never wish I was with one of the guys I didn’t settle for. Guys with a mean streak, guys who I couldn’t have a conversation with, ever, for more than 15 minutes, guys who I never really looked forward to seeing – not sorry. I don’t discount the possibility that somewhere, sometime, I failed to give somebody a chance. But as for the ones I did get to know and decided I couldn’t see spending my life with, I have no regrets.
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Halitosis is really a bridge too far.
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“It’s hard to maintain that level of zing when the conversation morphs into discussions about who’s changing the diapers or balancing the checkbook.)”
Actually, that’s the fun part of marriage, trying to figure out how to do that.
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The Gottlieb article has drawn a lot of attention – for the Atlantic, clearly a smart publishing decision. I read it second when it came to the house (after the Leinberger article on McMansions going to slums)
Now, her decisions? She walked away from a lot of guys with whom she now thinks marriage would make her happier than she is as a single mother to a son from sperm she picked from a catalog. She also has come to understand that zing is transitory. She presents as blinding insight that after your ass falls and your breasts are less perky, suitors are less frequent and will generally themselves have some mileage on them.
This really seems more like observations a parent should make to a son or daughter going off to college than an article for a major national magazine.
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Hugo Schwyzer blogged about this article a few weeks ago here. This line struck me from his post: “There’s much to be said for compromise in intimate relationships. But wisdom is knowing the difference between a “have to have” and a “would like to have.” And I think the collective experience of a great many people is that at least a period of powerful, mutual, sexual longing falls into the first category.”
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As usual, Jane Austen has gotten there first, this time in Sense and Sensibility:
“At present,” continued Elinor, “he regrets what he has done. And why does he regret it? Because finds it not answered towards himself; it has not made him happy. His circumstances are now unemharrassed, — he suffers from no evil of that kind; and he thinks only that he has married a woman of a less amiable temper than yourself. But does it thence follow that had he married you, he would have been happy? The inconveniences would have been different. He would then have suffered under the pecuniary distresses which, because they are removed, he now reckons as nothing. He would have had a wife of whose temper he could make no complaint, but he would have been always necessitous, always poor; and probably would soon have learned to rank the innumerable comforts of a clear estate and good income as of far more importance, even to domestic happiness, than the mere temper of a wife.”
Or, to put it another, far less felicitous way, we take for granted the joys we know, and over-value the ones we lost.
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Jody, I was thinking that Jane Austen did indeed get there first – but I thought of Charlotte Lucas, the one who married the odious Mr. Collins because it was better than being an “old maid.”
I’ve always been a fan of “broaden your horizons” in dating. But it’s one thing to say “don’t hold out for Mr. Big” or “dating outside your race or religion, or dating younger men, etc. expands your pool of eligibles”; and quite another to say “settle! Go ahead and marry a guy who gives you the creeps!” The latter is just ridiculous. And it’s not going to make for a happy marriage, to say the least.
If you marry a man you don’t really LIKE, let alone love, just because he’s a built-in breadwinner, babysitter, and extra pair of hands, how happy are you going to be? And how happy is HE going to be? How would Ms. Gottlieb (it’s Lori, btw, not Lisa) feel if she knew her husband found her basically repulsive and disgusting but kept her around anyway because she was so useful and it was better than being alone?
UGH. I say. UGH.
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I thought of Mr. Collins, too. And also of that unknown country that lies beyond child-rearing. It would be nice to have someone to go there with that you like, and that likes you.
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I think the important lesson in this article and the responses to it lies in a different direction from whether you have to be in love (have passionate mutual desire) or whether it’s good to settle. Like Jody said above, it’s about choosing your perspective and judging from that perspective instead of another.
It’s immature to seek happiness solely in perfection because perfection doesn’t exist, and a perspective that counts only the flaws in what we already have and only the benefits of the fantasy life (fantasy partner, fantasy job) we imagine is just that immature quest for perfection.
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If the question has anything to do with love and/or marriage, or men and/or women, and you’re talking basically about the Western civilization we know (i.e., you’re not a Muslim child bride), then you can rest assured that Jane Austen pretty much always has said it first. (And said it best, too.)
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And as we know, Jane Austen didn’t settle.
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Charlotte had to marry Mr. Collins to leave her parents’ household, secure an income in her old age, and have the children she desired. Gottlieb and her audience don’t face those constraints, so I didn’t think the Collins case applied. 😉
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Why does it naturally follow that the only way to have the “infrastructure in place to have a family” is to marry? This to me is a colossal failure of imagination.
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Gottlieb had a baby as a single woman via a donor, so she’s probably up on what it takes to have the “infrastructure in place to have a family.” She’s arguing that even a so-so husband can bring a big boost in quality of life for a mother and child. (For one thing, you don’t have to date while parenting.)
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So what, Gottlieb had no family to fall back on? She had no friends she felt could become special uncles or aunts to her child? No one she could share housing cost with, or swap sitting with? It seems ridiculous to me to jump from “I could really use some help with this colicky kid” to “I should have married that icky bond trader while I had the chance.”
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jen, that’s exactly the leap she has made. Along with noticing that fewer men are lining up to date her after little Roscoe came onto the scene.
But, on the ‘use some help’ front, it’s exactly when our kids are most demanding and fractious that one of us two says to the other, ‘never divorce me’
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In the world we live in, one does have to be careful about what kind of “special uncles” one entrusts one’s child to. And (judging by news stories about female teachers running off with adolescent boys or bearing their children), “special aunties” need some scrutiny, too. During the Catholic meltdown of 2002, a recurring theme was that clerical predators would focus on fatherless boys whose mothers were grateful to have a charming, responsible adult male role model “who loved kids”. Unfortunately, bad people seem to gravitate towards positions of trust involving children.
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Not sure how “don’t weed out a guy just because he doesn’t have everything on your Hott Guyz checklist” turns into “marry someone you don’t love or who doesn’t love you?” I think the point above about “got to have” vs. “Nice to have” is probably more accurate, and seems eminently sensible to me.
Two people are going to change enough during the course of a marriage that while it is true that you want to come out on the far side of childrearing married to someone you can enjoy your empty nest with, its hard to predict which of the features that attract you in your 20s will be the ones that persist for 20+ years (a hint, though, the hair is most likely the first to go ;)). A person will get more or less political, more or less religious, more or less attractive…. if you really are buying into the idea of marriage as a long-term partnership, you have to go into it knowing that any or all of the things you think of as the reasons you’re doing it are going to change, modulate, grow or shrink.
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The advice a high school boyfriend’s father gave him about the necessary components:
friendship, respect and lust.
That has pretty have guided me throughout.
(I loved that his dad said lust! what a fun word for high school folks).
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Has the author considered the fact that the birth of a child puts a tremendous strain on any marriage, and the ones that are not that great generally don’t make it?
Her perspective on relationships in general seems pretty childish. Her citing of mothers’ encouraging their daughters to consider the stereotypically undesirable boys treats this example as if it’s about mothers not wanting their daughters to end up alone, rather than about parents teaching their children to base their relationship choices on meaningful criteria, rather than shallow things. Taking that to mean “settling” seems like an adolescent perspective.
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I know I’m repeating myself, but Eleanor’s point about Willoughby is all that needs to be made here. Gottleib chose single parenthood rather than settling, and now she discounts the advantages that drove her to that choice in the first place because they’re largely invisible, and she mourns the partnership she lost in not settling. But if she HAD settled, it’s entirely likely that she would then take for granted the (presumed) benefits of partnership, and long for the benefits that made her choose single parenthood in the first place.
We can go backward and forward on whether Gottleib evaluates the benefits of partnership appropriately (personally I think she’s delusional — it’s hard enough to parent with someone you love, admire, and lust after) but ultimately, it doesn’t really matter. Gottleib is suffering from buyer’s remorse. She’s Willoughby for a new age.
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AGH. I shouldn’t keep re-reading this article. But consider:
“It’s one thing to settle for a subpar mate; it’s quite another to settle for a subpar father figure for my child.”
But in Gottleib’s universe, the subpar mate is supposedly sought precisely to be the FATHER. That’s his whole purpose. So why is a subpar father that much more acceptable than a subpar father figure? (Gottleib obviously hasn’t yet made friends with women whose ex-partners take their children into situations those women loathe.)
Gottleib went off the rails as soon as she accused every woman over the age of 30 of lying to herself is she said she wasn’t thinking, not just about partnership, but about children. Her entire article is predicated on the idea that every hetero women in the USA wants children, and that the 18 years of at-home parenting are so much our only goal, we should find a sub-par partner to share them with no matter what the costs.
She’s deep in Willoughby territory, and as incapable of recognizing her skewed perspective as he ever was.
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Gene Weingarten was dredging the past for an article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/08/AR2008040802046_pf.html
“Gene: Let’s clarify. Should it become an anthem for modern women, this article could increase the likelihood that ordinary guys, older guys, guys with big guts, small paychecks and underdeveloped social skills, guys who ordinarily might wind up married to career convenience-store clerks — that these undeserving men might wake up one day to find hot, interesting, graduate-student types with high income potential standing on their doorsteps with their toothbrushes.
Gina: Well, yes, but . . .
Gene: And these focused, fascinating, no doubt voluptuous young women would essentially be saying: “Hi, I’ve given up on finding someone more viable. I will share your bed and do your laundry.” Then they will fling their heads back and say, “Take me.”
Gina: Yes.
Gene: And you want me to tell my male readers that this should outrage them.
Gina: Yes.
Gene: Is there anything else I can help you with today? Because I’m kind of busy here.”
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