Just Because You Settle Doesn't Mean You Marry A Good Man
LatestNearly two years after Moe (and everyone else) criticized Lori Gottlieb’s advice to just settle for Mr. Maybe, Gottlieb came back. And so did her critics, and some evidence showing why exactly her advice is crap.
Gottlieb’s bullshit starts from one basic premise: nothing is as terrible as ending up without a husband. Despite being single herself, she knows that no married woman could possibly be as genuinely unfulfilled and unhappy as a single woman. Also, she’s certain that the reason she ended up single is that she was too picky (read: shallow) about the men she deemed not-right-for-her in her twenties, with whom she could have been better off — if not, you know, happy — so she now believes that the road to something akin to non-misery runs straight through the guy you don’t think you really want to go out with.
Moe’s response was:
In fact, that’s a good rule of thumb, if you constantly find yourself dating dudes for whom you think you are too good, that is probably the personality flaw that is keeping you from the perfect Mr. Right type characters you think you deserve.
In this, I think we all agree. If “settling” means finding a little maturity, dating guys because they are interesting people and treat you with respect and with whom you have things in common instead of dating guys because your mom hates them or they are taller than you, that’s a good start. If you define it as “settling” because he is 5’6″ rather than 5’9″, then you’re the one with the problem.
The bigger issue, for me, is the idea that almost any husband is better than no husband. Julia Baird has the same problem.
But it’s a leap of illogic to suggest that the answer is for women to settle for humdrum marriages with men you tolerate so you can have a father for your children. How insulting for men: imagine going to a boyfriend’s house and seeing Marry Her: The Case for Settling for Ms. Good Enough on his shelves.
It’s unfair to you, and it’s unfair to the man in question — who, in all likelihood, could find someone who actually, you know, loves him — and it does nothing but set both of you up for disappointment. If a husband is the goal, they’re not hard to find or, if the divorce rate is anything to go by, to lose. And as anyone who has been in a long-term unhappy relationship knows damn well, it is often just as easy to be lonely in a relationship as lonely without one.
Want some examples of how this works in practice? James Delingpole has a whole host of them in his article The Secret Lives Of Married Men, in which he purports to reveal the essential truths of maleness: namely, that married guys all cheat (or desperately want to), lie and think their wives are more their mothers than their partners! It makes marriage sound wicked awesome. For example:
“I think most men see their wives as authority figures that they have to rebel against. Sometimes I’ll nip outside for a sneaky fag, not because I’m a smoker, but because of how much my wife hates it.
Paging Dr. Freud! Somebody’s got unresolved mommy issues, and he’s not alone. There’s also this fabulous dad:
“And it’s not that I don’t love my kids; I adore them more than anything. It’s just that I like them to see me at my best, when I’m doing fun stuff with them, rather than worn down with tedious ferrying duties: recorder concerts, ballet classes, that kind of thing.”
You know, the shit his mother did for him! What a bitch she must have been.