Settle? Um, ew?
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008By Never teh Bride

I’m the first one to say that marriage isn’t always about ZOMG PASSION. First kisses, those are about passion. Romantic weddings? Passion-o-rama. Post break-up youknowwhatsie? Whoa Nelly! But marriage…marriage is occasionally antipassion, a substance that has a lot in common with antimatter. But, hey, there’s gotta be some passion, because that little spark that makes you feel all googlywoogly in your stomach when you look at your mate should never die out completely.
Unless, that is, you are one Lori Gottlieb, a woman who has apparently made a career out of airing her complexities (read: issues) in the public eye. In a recent article entitled Marry Him! she asserts that every single woman everywhere, no matter how satisfied, no matter how independent, wants a man, any man, as in “oh please for the love of God send a man so I can get married because there is no greater fulfillment for a woman!”
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.
To Gottlieb, marriage and by extension men (there’s no mention of what lesbians want) are nothing more than a means to an end. If you want security and a permanent live-in partner, then you need to start looking past his lack of wit, his lack of culture, and his lack of personality so you can start looking at what he does have, namely a pulse and a job.
I’m actually pro-settling to a certain extent. One line in the article, “I would say even if he’s not the love of your life, make sure he’s someone you respect intellectually, makes you laugh, appreciates you … I bet there are plenty of these men in the older, overweight, and bald category” really resonated with me. I happen to believe that there are tons of great guys who fall into the doesn’t-have-cool-hair-laughs-at-inappropriate-times-a-little-pudgy-can’t-dance-worth-a-damn category.
The point, however, is not that you settle for these rare and wonderful creatures. Rather, it’s that you give them a chance, find out that in addition to playing a mean game of WoW they’re secret sex machines, and then thank the Lord that some other lucky lady didn’t snap them up first. You don’t say, oh, ho hum, I’m just shy of forty so I better snare the first set of XY chromosomes who happens along so I don’t turn into a lonely old hag.
Unless, like I said, you’re Lori Gottlieb, in which case you’re probably going to spend your life sighing over romantic comedies while a husband who bores the crap out of you is off puttering around his workshop. Or not. As a friend of mine put it, “What, exactly, is she bringing to the table? Naked desperation and a ton of to-be-delegated responsibility? I, for one, am SHOCKED she hasn’t found a guy willing to “settle” for that.”
Heh.



















