Ingenial

There’s an undeniable obsession out there to marry the perfect spouse. This trend has bothered me for a while. It’s not because I got married young or because I don’t regret if for a minute. I mostly hate the “Mr. Perfect” ideal because I think Hollywood’s version doesn’t exist. Ultra-feminist Lori Gottlieb agrees whole-heartedly.

After giving up on marriage and dating she decided to conceive a child with donated sperm – a move she readily admits was a mistake in an article for the Atlantic. In the article she says that deep inside what she really wanted was a traditional family. She wants a teammate: someone to take out the trash, play with the kids for fifteen minutes and drop her son off at school. Here’s her advice to women,

“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. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.”

Ms. Gottlieb isn’t the only person discussing this topic. Somewhere along the path to 40 most single women pass up a lot of guys holding out for something better. John Molloy gives women some excellent pointers in his book “Why Men Marry Some Women and Not Others” about how to maximize the chance of meeting and marrying a well-rounded, normal male. Here are a few of his pointers:

• Women with a large number of female friends are more likely to marry than women with a large number of male friends
  • Men don’t go out of their way to introduce their female friends to other men
• If you reach 30 and want to get married, you have to make finding a husband a primary goal. Once your friends start getting married, they are less likely to have an active social life with you. Don’t be the last one off the bus!
• Women who get married, even those with high-powered careers, make getting married a priority that they work at.
• The larger the number of single men and women you work with, the better your chances of marrying

Read the full Atlantic article or read the Slate article about Ms. Gottlieb
Read an outline of John Molloy’s book here