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The following is from The London Times and is in two parts. This is one of the best articles about love I have read and it rings true to me in many ways. Whether man or woman, Gottlieb has some salient points. Part two follows:
About six months after my son was born, he and I were sitting on a blanket in the park with a close friend and her daughter. It was a sunny summer weekend, and other parents and their children picnicked nearby. My friend and I, who, in fits of self-empowerment, had conceived our babies with donor sperm because we hadn’t met Mr Right, 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 had both dreamt of motherhood, and here we were. 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, 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, a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she will say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).
To the outside world, we still call ourselves feminists, and insist that we are independent, self-sufficient and don’t believe that damsel-in-distress stuff. In reality, however, we are women who want a traditional family. And, despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra of getting married young was finally replaced by pursuit of high ideals (education, career, but also true love), every woman I know – no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure – feels panic if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.
Oh, I know. I’m guessing there are single, 30-year-old women reading this right now who will write letters to the editor to say that I have no idea what I’m talking about. All I can say is, if you say you’re not worried, you’re either in denial or lying.
Whether you acknowledge it or not, there is good reason to worry. By the time 35th-birthday brunch celebrations roll around for still-single women, serious, irreversible life issues masquerading as “jokes” creep into public conversation: “Well, I don’t feel old, but my eggs sure do”; “I’m not getting any younger”. The birthday girl smiles a bit too widely as she delivers these lines, and everyone laughs a little too hard for a little too long because, at their core, they pose one of the most complicated, painful and pervasive dilemmas with which many single women are forced to grapple nowadays: is it better to be alone or to settle?
My advice is this: settle. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t rule out a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in the cinema. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. If you want the infrastructure in place for a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, because many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.
Obviously, I wasn’t always an advocate of settling. In fact, it took not settling to make me realise that settling is the better option. Whenever I make the case for settling, people look at me with creased brows of disapproval or frowns of disappointment. Not only is it politically incorrect to get behind settling, it is downright unacceptable. Our culture tells us to keep our eyes on the prize (while our mothers, who know better, tell us not to be so picky), and the theme of holding out for true love (whatever that is – look at the divorce rate) permeates our collective mentality. When we’re holding out for deep, romantic love, we have the fantasy that this level of passionate intensity will make us happier – but marrying Mr Good Enough might be an equally viable option, especially if you’re looking for a stable, reliable, life companion.
What I didn’t realise, when I decided, in my thirties, to break up with boyfriends I might otherwise have ended up marrying, is that while settling seems like an enormous act of resignation when you’re looking at it from the vantage point of a single person, once you take the plunge, you will probably be relatively content. It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about who you want to go on holiday with, it’s about who you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a small, mundane and often boring not-for-profit business. And I mean this in a good way.
I don’t mean that settling is ideal. As the only single woman in my son’s mummy-and-me group, I listen each week to unrelenting complaints about people’s husbands and feel pretty good about my decision to hold out for the right guy, only to realise that these women wouldn’t trade places with me for a second, no matter how dull their marriages. They, like me, would rather feel alone in a marriage than actually be alone, because they, like me, realise that ultimately, marriage isn’t about cosmic connection – it’s about how having a teammate, even if he’s not the love of your life, is better than not having one at all.
It’s not that I’ve become so jaded that I don’t believe in, or even crave, romantic connection. It’s that my understanding of it has changed. In my formative years, romance was John Cusack and Ione Skye in Say Anything. When I think about marriage nowadays, however, my role models are the television characters Will and Grace – who, though Will was gay, and his relationship with Grace was platonic, are one of the most romantic couples I can think of. What I long for is that sense of having a partner in crime. Someone who knows your day-to-day trivia. Someone who both calls you to task on your bullshit and puts up with your quirks. So what if Will and Grace weren’t having sex? How many long-standing married couples are having much sex?
“I just want someone who is willing to be in the trenches with me,” my single friend Jennifer told me, “and I never thought of marriage that way before.” Two of her friends have married men she believes aren’t even straight; and, while she wouldn’t have made that choice a few years ago, she wonders whether she might be capable of it in the future. “Maybe they understood something that I didn’t,” she said.
What they understood is this: as your priorities change from romance to family, the so-called deal-breakers change. Some guys aren’t worldly, but they would make great dads. You walk into a room and start talking to somebody who is 5ft 4in, with an unfortunate nose, but he “gets” you. My long-married friend Renée offered this advice: “Even if he’s not the love of your life, make sure he is someone you respect intellectually, who makes you laugh and appreciates you . . . I bet there are plenty of these men in the older, overweight and bald category.” (Which, in any case, they all eventually become.)
About six months after my son was born, he and I were sitting on a blanket in the park with a close friend and her daughter. It was a sunny summer weekend, and other parents and their children picnicked nearby. My friend and I, who, in fits of self-empowerment, had conceived our babies with donor sperm because we hadn’t met Mr Right, 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 had both dreamt of motherhood, and here we were. 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, 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, a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she will say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).
To the outside world, we still call ourselves feminists, and insist that we are independent, self-sufficient and don’t believe that damsel-in-distress stuff. In reality, however, we are women who want a traditional family. And, despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra of getting married young was finally replaced by pursuit of high ideals (education, career, but also true love), every woman I know – no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure – feels panic if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.
Oh, I know. I’m guessing there are single, 30-year-old women reading this right now who will write letters to the editor to say that I have no idea what I’m talking about. All I can say is, if you say you’re not worried, you’re either in denial or lying.
Whether you acknowledge it or not, there is good reason to worry. By the time 35th-birthday brunch celebrations roll around for still-single women, serious, irreversible life issues masquerading as “jokes” creep into public conversation: “Well, I don’t feel old, but my eggs sure do”; “I’m not getting any younger”. The birthday girl smiles a bit too widely as she delivers these lines, and everyone laughs a little too hard for a little too long because, at their core, they pose one of the most complicated, painful and pervasive dilemmas with which many single women are forced to grapple nowadays: is it better to be alone or to settle?
My advice is this: settle. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t rule out a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in the cinema. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. If you want the infrastructure in place for a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, because many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.
Obviously, I wasn’t always an advocate of settling. In fact, it took not settling to make me realise that settling is the better option. Whenever I make the case for settling, people look at me with creased brows of disapproval or frowns of disappointment. Not only is it politically incorrect to get behind settling, it is downright unacceptable. Our culture tells us to keep our eyes on the prize (while our mothers, who know better, tell us not to be so picky), and the theme of holding out for true love (whatever that is – look at the divorce rate) permeates our collective mentality. When we’re holding out for deep, romantic love, we have the fantasy that this level of passionate intensity will make us happier – but marrying Mr Good Enough might be an equally viable option, especially if you’re looking for a stable, reliable, life companion.
What I didn’t realise, when I decided, in my thirties, to break up with boyfriends I might otherwise have ended up marrying, is that while settling seems like an enormous act of resignation when you’re looking at it from the vantage point of a single person, once you take the plunge, you will probably be relatively content. It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about who you want to go on holiday with, it’s about who you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a small, mundane and often boring not-for-profit business. And I mean this in a good way.
I don’t mean that settling is ideal. As the only single woman in my son’s mummy-and-me group, I listen each week to unrelenting complaints about people’s husbands and feel pretty good about my decision to hold out for the right guy, only to realise that these women wouldn’t trade places with me for a second, no matter how dull their marriages. They, like me, would rather feel alone in a marriage than actually be alone, because they, like me, realise that ultimately, marriage isn’t about cosmic connection – it’s about how having a teammate, even if he’s not the love of your life, is better than not having one at all.
It’s not that I’ve become so jaded that I don’t believe in, or even crave, romantic connection. It’s that my understanding of it has changed. In my formative years, romance was John Cusack and Ione Skye in Say Anything. When I think about marriage nowadays, however, my role models are the television characters Will and Grace – who, though Will was gay, and his relationship with Grace was platonic, are one of the most romantic couples I can think of. What I long for is that sense of having a partner in crime. Someone who knows your day-to-day trivia. Someone who both calls you to task on your bullshit and puts up with your quirks. So what if Will and Grace weren’t having sex? How many long-standing married couples are having much sex?
“I just want someone who is willing to be in the trenches with me,” my single friend Jennifer told me, “and I never thought of marriage that way before.” Two of her friends have married men she believes aren’t even straight; and, while she wouldn’t have made that choice a few years ago, she wonders whether she might be capable of it in the future. “Maybe they understood something that I didn’t,” she said.
What they understood is this: as your priorities change from romance to family, the so-called deal-breakers change. Some guys aren’t worldly, but they would make great dads. You walk into a room and start talking to somebody who is 5ft 4in, with an unfortunate nose, but he “gets” you. My long-married friend Renée offered this advice: “Even if he’s not the love of your life, make sure he is someone you respect intellectually, who makes you laugh and appreciates you . . . I bet there are plenty of these men in the older, overweight and bald category.” (Which, in any case, they all eventually become.)