Wise girls settle for Mr Good Enough

Lori Gottlieb’s marriage advice has caused a storm. She tells us why women should get real about romance
Leah McLaren


According to Jewish lore, anyone who sets up three successful matches secures a place in heaven. If that’s so, the queen of heavenly matchmakers must be Lori Gottlieb, author of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough. Indeed, I owe my own marriage, in part, to Gottlieb. It wasn’t her match-making skills but her straight talk that helped me down the aisle.

The point of her new book, due out in Britain this spring, is that many single women get to a state of desperation in searching for a husband because they don’t make wise decisions early on, such as dating dependable men rather than handsome cads — the sort who take you to bed for six months, spend your money, rip out your heart and stomp it to a bloody pulp.

When I speak to Gottlieb for her first British interview, I tell her that my mother sent me the original 2008 magazine article on which her book is based within, oh, about five minutes of publication. In the article Gottlieb wrote of her deep regret at having passed on all the nice guys in her thirties in the search for allconsuming love.

Her stark message ran directly counter to the neofeminist Sex and the Cityperpetuated mantra that we should all hold out for The One because we’re worth it. “Don’t worry about passion or intense connection,” Gottlieb wrote, “because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go.

“Based on my observations, 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.”

Her words set off a furore that the book has now reignited. Last week, as Marry Him came out in America, the papers were full of thirtysomethings passionately arguing that every girl should hold out for Mr Perfect against others who believe practicality rules: that Mr Second Best is better than Mr Nobody.

I married my husband for love but I’d be lying if I said that Gottlieb’s dry-eyed observation that family life is not about bodice-ripping passion but akin to “running a small tedious non-profit business” didn’t affect me. Besides, at 33 I wasn’t getting any younger. Woe betide the naive singleton who assumes her choice of men will widen, rather than narrow, with time.

“The truth is, once you’re closing in on 40 you can certainly find love and companionship and all those things but it’s probably going to look different from what you imagined,” Gottlieb says. “I look at my friends who got married later on and I look at who they married and let me tell you, it’s very different from who they would have married 10 years earlier.”


skipo.......

“Feminism gave women this sense of entitlement that we deserve someone who’s perfect. And then we meet the so-called perfect guy and he’s out of our league and has no interest in us and we tell our girlfriends, ‘He must be secretly gay’ when in fact he’s just really not that into us,” she says

(shocked that she blames feminism for giving women a entitlement mentality)

Much more of reading here...


(Pssst... Think about it... Don't wait around and possibly get passed up when you can always bail later with all his assets)

Very interesting comments. How many guys would marry knowing she thinks she deserved better than you and she was just settling for Mr. NonRight?