Settling for Mr. Good Enough

[blockthebox]

If you're under 30, you probably won't find the following very interesting.

Hilarious article about settling or face being single for the rest of your life. I thought it was funny because I know a girl who married a guy who we ALL believe is gay (and not just kinda gay, like oh, sexuality is a spectrum and he's a little closer to the middle ... no, he's GAY like give him a fucking float in the parade). Did she settle? Sure, but so far they're happily married with a kid.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/single-marry

[jaehwan]

Great article, BTB.

It's kind of sad because as I enter my mid-thirties, I'm starting to see women my age settle too. It's always the women; the men just remain single. I haven't yet seen how their lives turn out though.

By the way, taking care of a kid yourself is brutal. I don't know how anyone does it.

Edit: Oh sweet, and now the Atlantic is free!
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801u/editors-note

[blockthebox]

Yeah, it's hard to say what'll happen ten or twenty years later, like maybe my friend's gay husband will suddenly come leaping out of the closet and demand a divorce. But I do find her argument FOR settling pretty compelling in a really funny way. And really, settling isn't such a bad thing. Mr/Ms Good Enough is just that -- good enough. It just seems to be a topic that makes some people in relationships squirm a bit.

[Candide]

Glad to see that Mr Good Enough gets the honour & privilege of becoming a sperm donor and mobile ATM (on top of many other duties) in exchange for damaged goods.

[ZhuBaJie]

sweet revenge! for all the times i was rejected when i was younger. lower standards and expectations == less work for me. because i fully realise that i'm not much of a catch.

[howstrange]

it's clear, by all the movie and tv references the columnist cited, that her personal evolution through pop culture would inevitably lead towards a menopausal disaster of loneliness.
Maybe it’s not so much settling for a person, but settling down that cable remote control.

[Le Sheng Liu]

Ugh I hope I never have to settle. Cuz for some reason, fat bitches love me.

[Reflection]

I believe that people change and grow as they get older and so do the qualities they want in a partner. I say this because if I had met my husband 7 years ago, I would not have looked at him twice, which would have been my lost, since I believe we perfectly complement each other in every way, almost at if we complete each other (corny I know but true). Plus, I never thought I would marry an Asian man, especially Japanese. Life is a funny thing, you never know what lies ahead and will stir you emotions in ways you would have ever imagine. So, what may appear to be "settling" may not be the case to the parties involve. However, as for you friend and her supposedly homosexual (not gay as in happy I hope) partner, maybe he is bisexual and she accepts that about him as a person because I know many couples like that myself; however, I could not do it.

[ninajoy]

that article while humorous is totally depressing. i'm in a relationship now and while things are fine and i like the guy...i'm not crazy passionately head over heels for him. i keep wondering if i'll ever have that feeling of meeting 'mr. right' or 'my soul mate' etc...or if i should be happy with what i've got (he is a pretty great guy...just doesn't inspire blazing fires of passion). i would consider it settling...but, better than being single still at 40.

[nightshade]

I enjoy my bachelorhood. The other day I called up a friend on valentine's day to see if she wanted to go drinking with me and some other friends. Her response was, "Er, how come I feel like you're saying to me, bros before hos? How can such a tiny stylish girl be such a bro?"

I guess it would be different if I wanted children. And if I was going to settle, I'd totes get myself a gay boy.

[Le Sheng Liu]

It's odd hearing about women settling for gay men cuz most women feel the only quality men out there are always gay hahahaha!!!

[Dialectic]

This is a VERY interesting passage:

"A number of my single women friends admit (in hushed voices and after I swear I won’t use their real names here) that they’d readily settle now but wouldn’t have 10 years ago. They believe that part of the problem is that we grew up idealizing marriage—and that if we’d had a more realistic understanding of its cold, hard benefits, we might have done things differently. Instead, we grew up thinking that marriage meant feeling some kind of divine spark, and so we walked away from uninspiring relationships that might have made us happy in the context of a family."

It's not just the post-Boomer generations idealizing marriage, it's the fact that we idealize EVERYTHING: love, work, life. This actually points to a post-Boomer trend started with good intentions by the Boomers themselves, but is now starting, I think, to run out of steam. Thanks to the rise of the self-conscious, intensely analytical, postmodern way of thinking, we in the Western middle-class are taught essentially from birth that we can have everything, do whatever we want, and be whatever we want. It's now all about growth, fulfillment, self-esteem, meaningful lives, jobs, and relationships, and the world doesn't always work that way; in fact, it very rarely works that way (though it can, given optimal exterior and interior conditions).

A video I watched a while ago mentioned that this current generation coming up is scoring the highest on narcissism tests since the tests were invented: we're even beating the Boomer "Me" generation, which was named for it's self-absorption.

It's also interesting that the author mentions a backlash against feminism; the feminism she's referring to is distinctly second-wave: hyper-autonomous, rebellious, and aggressive.

In both cases, "postmodernism" and "feminism," I think what we're seeing now is a swing away from those extremes toward more balanced, nuanced, and contextual approaches to meaning and gender (and race!).

(I may actually frontpage this. Btb and other admin and folks with frontpage access; don't forget you can post stuff you think is cool there! Anything goes for you guys, directly Asian-related or not, as I trust your judgment.)

[kwak76]

This article reminds me of my sister. She got married at the age of 34. I remember when she was in her 20's she demanded this and that from a guy. She had high expectation. I'm not sure why but maybe all of that TV drama she grew up watching influence her thinking.

She wanted a tall , professional , Christian and a guy who would say the right things to her at the right time. (when she was younger she prefer white guys but change her view partly from my discontent.)

Anyway, in her late 20's she always assume that there be some great guy just around the corner to take her off to the sunset. What fantasy ?!! I got angry at my sister number of times saying that in the real world it doesn't work like that. I actually introduce my sister to some of my older male friends but my sister had this huge pride.

No offense I love my sister and I wouldn't introduce bums to my sister but at the same time even at the age of 30 she still had this high expectation. She would say things like he was not tall enough or he was too Korean or not Godly enough. I got piss at my sister because she wouldn't give these guys a chance.

At the same time I don't know why but for some women they just have this high expectation but I always ask them including my sister what do you offer ?

A couple of my sister close friends got married. She stop talking to one of them and the other one was too busy with "family life" to hang out with my sister. This is when marriage became more important to my sister. She wanted to start a family real bad. It's funny at that time her standard drop so dramatically .

Her standard drop so much that she actually accepted a blind date with some 40 year old bald Korean guy who lived in another state. To be honest I felt more sorry for the bald Korean guy.

My sister was sensitive about finding someone and the pressure from family made everyone uncomfortable. Well, eventually my sister did find someone.

My brother in law is not a bad guy but he is nothing what my sister would of dated a few years ago. He is short, too Korean and at that time did not believe in Christ but he was older and wanted to start a family .

It worked out in the end for my sister and I think my sister appreciates what she had to go through.

[maogirl]

pot...kettle...

anyway, i think this article is also touching on the fact that what you want in your 20s is totally different from what you want as you get older. you could be extremely foolish and romantic in your 20s and pine for impossible men, or you could have low self-esteem and not think you deserve better. or you could really just not know yourself well enough to know what you want.

[kwak76]

I am kind of curious. Is this something that only effects American women or women from developing nations ? I would imagine that in other countries the social land scape is bit different and women would settle.

[nottyboy]

Honestly, what did the author really think all this time? That her prospects would get better after she got older, had a child and her looks went?

Most desireable men get snagged long before they hit their 40's, and those who can afford to play the field longer are definitely not going to settle down with older single mothers whose looks aren't there anymore. Right or wrong, it's just the reality, and find it hard to believe that people would not see that.

From reading the article I actually think she's got a much better life on her own.

[Senkeh]

I am kind of curious. Is this something that only effects American women or women from developing nations ? I would imagine that in other countries the social land scape is bit different and women would settle.

Amen. I was raised mostly by my father and he's not an American. The ideas of "Mr. Right" were demolished as soon as I became a teenager. He lectured me day in and day out on what to look for in a man, and he never mentioned "stuff" or "looks." It simply boiled down to, "Marry a kind man who will be responsible and take care of his family." In America, that's called "settling," a word which, IMO, belittles the logical concept of simply marrying wisely.

But then again, as Dialectic was saying, the American world is based on unrealistic desires and expectations anyway.

[blockthebox]

Honestly, what did the author really think all this time? That her prospects would get better after she got older, had a child and her looks went?

No. Her point was that she SHOULDN'T have waited. I'm sure she's painfully aware of the fact that her prospects are worse now. This is why, somewhat facetiously, she considers continuing to date the guy with clinical depression and a fascination with terrorists and coma victims.

In America, that's called "settling," a word which, IMO, belittles the logical concept of simply marrying wisely.

This is a good point. What do we mean when we say someone "settled"? That he makes only $150k instead of $500k?

[kwak76]

I don't know if you can add numbers as what it means to settle with someone. Since I am at that age where marriage is cropping up I wonder if I should settle with whatever girl accepts me.

I think settling me just finding someone that you get along with and have at least the same goals. (I would think.) Problem is I meet guys who don't settle because they are holding out for a hotter girl and girls who don't settle holding out for Mr.Perfect. Which doesn't exist .

[Dialectic]

I think you should settle with whatever girl accepts you.

[Senkeh]

Problem is I meet guys who don't settle because they are holding out for a hotter girl and girls who don't settle holding out for Mr.Perfect. Which doesn't exist .

Absolutely. I can't tell you how many times friends of mine--beautiful, educated, making-good-money, took-good-care-of-their-men friends of mine have been dumped for the stupidest.

One guy dumped a friend of mine because he simply thought he could do better (it never happened). Another alienated his woman because he had an Asian fetish and figured that if he spent enough money on this one Asian chick, she'd put out. (He did this while he was still seeing my friend). Needless to say, it never happened. The Asian chick, bless her, showed up, got wined and dined, and didn't do a damn thing for him.

And now one of my guy friends is telling me how he's willing to throw away any perfectly good relationship if the woman won't let him put it in her ass--and he said this with the utmost seriousness. Because for him, that's the cornerstone of a healthy, long-lasting relationship.

[kwak76]

Dialectic,

I hope you didn't mean that as an insult.

[evil_FUX]

I'm pretty sure it was genuine kwak

[minbo]

As Senkeh noted, some people want to marry for "love", the author of the article wants to marry for a hubby and a baby. "Settling" is simply a matter of deciding what is more important to you in a relationship. Is having a spouse and kids more important than love? Is domestic and financial stability more important than kids or love? Just because a persons priorities in a relationship do not match what is espoused in popular media does not mean they are settling. Just because a persons priorities change as they age, have different experiences and are in different situations in life does not mean that they are settling or compromising their youthful principles either.

I read this article a while ago about the changed purpose of marriage over the years that I thought was interesting and a reasonable counterpoint to the first article posted. Without further ado...

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/01/14/stephanie-coontz/the-future-of-marriage

[ninajoy]

This is a good point. What do we mean when we say someone "settled"? That he makes only $150k instead of $500k?


i thought it meant marrying a guy that while is good to start a family with and you guys get along....you're just not 'in love' with him. a relationship that makes practical sense but lacks passion or desire. regardless of how much money he makes.

am i wrong?


i'll admit i'm heavily influenced by the media...can't help it really. i feel like i may be missing out on some great love of my life if i settle for 'mr. good enough'. (i've never really been 'in love', so i suspect part of my expectations are prolly unrealistic...) although....of my friends that have had great love affairs only one didn't end tragically...they're basically in a common law marriage b/c they've been together so long and are just as crazy about each other as when they 1st met. i'm quite envious. all my other friends totally crashed and burned and that freaks me out...i'd rather not have all that trauma especially at this point in my life. but i still wonder if i'm settling now and if i should wait for that 'great love'... or maybe its all just an illusion that i'll never realize...

[ninajoy]

I read this article a while ago about the changed purpose of marriage over the years that I thought was interesting and a reasonable counterpoint to the first article posted. Without further ado...

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/01/14/stephanie-coontz/the-future-of-marriage



that is a great article, thanks for posting it. the following quote is most interesting to me:

"A recent study by Paul Amato et al. found that the chance of divorce recedes with each year that a woman postpones marriage, with the least divorce-prone marriages being those where the couples got married at age 35 or higher."

[nottyboy]

No. Her point was that she SHOULDN'T have waited. I'm sure she's painfully aware of the fact that her prospects are worse now. This is why, somewhat facetiously, she considers continuing to date the guy with clinical depression and a fascination with terrorists and coma victims.


No no, I got that. Unless I'm missing her sarcasm, it just surprises me that she treats this as some sort of revelation or deep realization. I think it's obvious to the majority of people by the time they hit 20 if not earlier.

[nottyboy]

I don't know if you can add numbers as what it means to settle with someone. Since I am at that age where marriage is cropping up I wonder if I should settle with whatever girl accepts me.

I think settling me just finding someone that you get along with and have at least the same goals. (I would think.) Problem is I meet guys who don't settle because they are holding out for a hotter girl and girls who don't settle holding out for Mr.Perfect. Which doesn't exist .

First you need to know what you want. A lot of guys only know that they want a "hot girl", but don't think beyond that.

By the way, a science teacher I had in 6th grade had a rule of thumb: "Never settle with someone uglier than you."

[Dialectic]

Dialectic,

I hope you didn't mean that as an insult.

Responded to your PM; I apologize, no insult was intended, it's my knee-jerk sarcastic reaction to your writing style.

Fux, don't be a shit-disturber!

[evil_FUX]

Wtf is a shit-disturber?

[minbo]

A shit stirrer is what touk wearers call troublemakers.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shit+stirrer

[lopan]

^ Shit stirrer? What the hell is that? It's shit-disturber.

[minbo]

Shit stirrer, shit disturber... You can't expect all of us Walmart shopping, Starbucks exporting, OE 40 and Natty Light tallboy swilling Yanks to keep track of all the weird English dialect branches you Canuks dream up in a Molsen and Labatt induced haze, eh?

[evil_FUX]

Alright, I guess--if one would classify that as troublemaking.

[angi]

This was posted in one of my girlie forums and is probably the best response ever.

Well I can tell that this is written by a woman with little to no experience with men, and a sad outlook on her life that smells of her thinking she has failed. She has decided at her age that a man around is enviable because she thinks strangers she sees in the park are "content" and that having a man is enviable because the man "plays with the infant for 20 minutes so the woman can eat lunch". A DVD can do that.

She also doesn't seem to realize that 50% of those enviable contentment situations she sees end in divorce.

It's not that people don't have a realistic view of marriage and love. It's that they don't couple it with waiting for someone decent. They meet some random dude and then fall in love and think that's what they have to work with. When an ADULT with realistic expectations AND a sense of true love knows if you don't have the full package, you'll be packing later - for divorce.

This woman is suggesting a way to not have to eat alone for people desperate not to be single. It's a recipe for divorce. Settling for a man isn't the same as settling for a Camry instead of a BMW 600 class. The Camry won't secretly hate you and fuck the coworker.

As someone who dated over 50 men, and had several longterm relationships, including a 5 year "content" relationship with a very nice man, I can tell you settling is a way to make sure you live with regret and dissatisfaction. Because of laziness, fear, some misguided reasoning love is somehow a big deal that means you work with what you have, women stay in situations I would be sad if a dog lived in them.

My main complaint with my husband is he has more fender benders than I would like. WHOOPEE. He does anything I want, brings home the bacon, is very sexy to me, tells me he loves me, does dishes and catboxes, watches any movie I want, eats what I want, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. There's no fighting. And he still manages to be a man and have his own interests and no, he isn't pussy whipped. What he is is kind and loving.

So go ahead and settle, there are divorce attorneys who need your money because they can't get mine.

[jaehwan]

A good reason not to settle:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/03/03/sexless.marriage/index.html

[little mixed girl]

The Camry won't secretly hate you and fuck the coworker.

love it!

i never had a "mr.right" that i was looking for. when people get stuck on "he's gotta be 6'1, look like so-and-so star, make such-and-such..."etc etc, they set themselves up for failure.

i have a lot of "rules" myself, but i think that many of them can be pretty flexible, and i don't lock myself into a certain "look".

[minbo]

Came across this "game theory" explanation on The Slate I thought fit well with this thread.
The Eligible-Bachelor Paradox

How economics and game theory explain the shortage of available, appealing men.

By Mark Gimein
Posted Wednesday, April 9, 2008, at 4:23 PM ET It is a truth universally acknowledged that the available, sociable, and genuinely attractive man is a character highly in demand in social settings. Dinner hosts are always looking for the man who fits all the criteria. When they don't find him (often), they throw up their hands and settle for the sociable but unattractive, the attractive but unsociable, and, as a last resort, for the merely available.
The shortage of appealing men is a century-plus-old commonplace of the society melodrama. The shortage—or—more exactly, the perception of a shortage—becomes evident as you hit your late 20s and more acute as you wander into the 30s. Some men explain their social fortune by believing they've become more attractive with age; many women prefer the far likelier explanation that male faults have become easier to overlook.
The problem of the eligible bachelor is one of the great riddles of social life. Shouldn't there be about as many highly eligible and appealing men as there are attractive, eligible women?
Actually, no—and here's why. Consider the classic version of the marriage proposal: A woman makes it known that she is open to a proposal, the man proposes, and the woman chooses to say yes or no. The structure of the proposal is not, "I choose you." It is, "Will you choose me?" A woman chooses to receive the question and chooses again once the question is asked.
The idea of the woman choosing expressed in the proposal is a resilient one. The woman picking among suitors is a rarely reversed archetype of romantic love that you'll find everywhere from Jane Austen to Desperate Housewives. Or take any comic wedding scene: Invariably, it'll have the man standing dazed at the altar, wondering just how it is he got there.
Obviously, this is simplified—in contemporary life, both sides get plenty of chances to be selective. But as a rough-and-ready model, it's not bad, and it contains a solution to the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox.
You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so. In game-theory terms, you would call the first group "strong bidders" and the second "weak bidders." Your first thought might be that the "strong bidders"—women who (whether because of looks, social ability, or any other reason) are conventionally deemed more of a catch—would consistently win this kind of auction.
But this is not true. In fact, game theory predicts, and empirical studies of auctions bear out, that auctions will often be won by "weak" bidders, who know that they can be outbid and so bid more aggressively, while the "strong" bidders will hold out for a really great deal. You can find a technical discussion of this here (http://www2.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/wt1/staff/ivanova-stenzel/asym-finaleercorrected3.pdf). (Be warned: "Bidding Behavior in Asymmetric Auctions" is not for everyone, and I certainly won't claim to have a handle on all the math.) But you can also see how this works intuitively if you just consider that with a lot at stake in getting it right in one shot, it's the women who are confident that they are holding a strong hand who are likely to hold out and wait for the perfect prospect.
This is how you come to the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox, which is no longer so paradoxical. The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable "strong bidders."
Where have all the most appealing men gone? Married young, most of them—and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.
Evolutionary psychologists will remind us that there's a long line of writing about "female choosiness" going back to Darwin and the male peacocks competing to get noticed by "choosy" mates with their splendid plumage. But you don't have to buy that kind of reductive biological explanation (I don't) to see the force of the "women choose" model. You only have to accept that for whatever socially constructed reason, the choice of getting married is one in which the woman is usually the key player. It might be the man who's supposed to ask the official, down-on-the-knee question, but it usually comes after a woman has made the central decision. Of course, in this, as in all matters of love, your experience may vary.
There may be those who look at this and try to derive some sort of prescription, about when to "bid," when to hold out, and when (as this Atlantic story urges (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/single-marry)) to "settle." If you're inclined to do that, approach with care. Game theory deals with how best to win the prize, but it works only when you can decide what's worth winning.
Mark Gimein (http://www.markgimein.com/) is a New York-based writer.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2188684/

[ZhuBaJie]

This was posted in one of my girlie forums and is probably the best response ever.

...

My main complaint with my husband is he has more fender benders than I would like. WHOOPEE. He does anything I want, brings home the bacon, is very sexy to me, tells me he loves me, does dishes and catboxes, watches any movie I want, eats what I want, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc. There's no fighting. And he still manages to be a man and have his own interests and no, he isn't pussy whipped. What he is is kind and loving.

sounds pretty pussy whipped to me. but hey, what do i know, i haven't dated 50 men like she has.