Thursday, February 25, 2010

The Case for Marriage

Lori Gottlieb waxes lyrically romantic about the reasons to marry somebody decent instead of holding out for the perfect man:
My married friends with kids don’t spend that much time with their husbands anyway (between work and child care), and in many cases, their biggest complaint seems to be that they never see each other. So if you rarely see your husband—but he’s a decent guy who takes out the trash and sets up the baby gear, and he provides a second income that allows you to spend time with your child instead of working 60 hours a week to support a family on your own—how much does it matter whether the guy you marry is The One?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

What about, I don't know, meeting someone and liking them and thinking they're cute and funny or whatever?

Not knowing Lori Gottlieb or having read this or any other of her books or the review you're quoting, I still wonder if this sterile obsession with the either/or of finding the One or settling for merely decent isn't entirely rooted in a preoccupation with what outside parties will think of one's catch, and how it will affect their opinion of the catcher, that is, oneself.

John said...

Lori Gottlieb is an ambitious woman who never found a man good enough for her and, hearing that ticking clock sound, decided to have a baby by herself. Now she is a single mother and she seems to think she might have been happier if she had married one of the men she dated along the way. On the other hand she may just be such a jerk that forming a lasting relationship with anyone would be very hard for her. Who knows? But her public foray into telling other women not to do what she has done is quite odd.

My experience, like David's, has been that I meet a woman and like her and fall naturally into a relationship. But it seems that for many people, this process is anything but natural or easy. It seems that for many people it is fraught with peril, especially the peril of making a bad choice. Many people seem to closely guard their emotions, and to be very reluctant to let them grow. This advice, I suppose, is directed toward such people.