No, I can't stop reading all the links about settling

Oh, here's a good one.

"First off, this idea, that a nice, decent guy who will take out the trash, play with the kids, and give you twenty-minutes alone from time to time is so worth settling on that you should overlook his minor flaws and eccentricities and put-up with his essential boorishness, is advancing the cause that's the theme of countless beer commercials, far too many sitcoms, and movies like Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin.

But I just can't let Gottlieb get away with advocating settling and not marrying for love on the grounds that the daily grind of raising kids and running a household take the "zing" out of any relationship.  True enough.  But if two people who love each other and have decided to spend the rest of their lives together because they want to be with each other not just because they need cheap live-in babysitting grow weary and irritable with each other over things like paying the bills and cleaning up after a sick kid and arguing over whether or not to order take-out or make sandwiches because both partners are too tired to make dinner, what's going to happen between two people who don't especially care for each other?

Children don't just need to be loved.  They take it for granted anyway when they are.  They need to see people loving and caring for others in order to understand what it means, how it works, how to do it.  Watching a couple of respectful partners who've settled on each other passing them back and forth on schedule teaches them that they are either burdens or that other people are there just to be utilized.
This is why I am not a believer in staying together for the sake of the children.  I am in favor of staying in love for the sake of the children, which is an idea that deserves some more thought, on my part.  It's better that children move back and forth between loving step-parents than staying put with unloving parents."

Shakesville: "Yes, marry a man. Any man will do. Doesn't matter if he's nice, or doesn't brush his teeth. Indeed, his inner life doesn't matter much at all. He's part of the infrastructure, you see, of the family. And while infrastructure may sometimes collapse and fall into the Mississippi River, it doesn't think."

• "And a marriage without love is just the same as pissing in your pants to get warm on a cold day. It works for a little while but in the end you are worse off than when you started."
• "In addition to the incalcuable psychological and emotion damage you do to yourself and your "partner" when you go into a marriage as if you were conceding a chess game, children who grow up in loveless households know what's going on. It gives you a miserable outlook on life when Daddy is working long hours just to stay the fuck away from Mommy (or vice versa), and all that bitterness that comes from "settling"--the bitterness Gottlieb ignores completely--is going to seep into home life somehow."
• "For someone who claims to be a big sitcom fan, she sure does not follow those characters' story arcs very closely. Rhoda Morgenstern, the best buddy on the The Mary Tyler Moore Show, got married when she spun off into her own sitcom.  The wedding episode of Rhoda was fantastic, but the marriage itself?  She was MISERABLE about it.  And why?  Because she settled in exactly the way Gottlieb advocates, for a guy she couldn't talk to. She eventually got divorced. Mary Richards, almost always unattached, was way the fuck happier than she was. That was the ENTIRE GODDAMN POINT of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, that a woman could be over 30 and not married and not all freaked out about it and be just fine.
  
  Sex and the City? Those women tried to "settle" over and over and over again and once again, were similarly miserable about it. They weren't miserable because they were single; they were their very most miserable when they tried to make themselves fit the nuclear couple role when the synergy and chemistry simply were not there. I mean, shit, woman, even if you're going to live in TV land, you need to pay attention."
  

Jezebel points out that Lori Gottlieb has her own issues beyond this: "At which point you google her, learn that she not only wrote a memoir about how she's a recovering anorexic but now has an author bio page on her website on which all the photos of herself feature her in super "skinny" poses.
See? She's ana. A perfectionist, a number-cruncher, a quantitatively-minded overachiever obsessed with stats. Of course she never managed to find someone to "settle" on before! She's incapable of settling! It's like giving up. Like eating carbs."

• "This poor woman is lonely and full of misty regrets, so she's advising younger woman to get baby-making with Mr. "Eh. He'll Do." Don't do it!!!
  What happens to this family when Mr. Eh starts sleeping with his secretary because she seems to like him more than his wife does? Or Mrs. Eh meets someone with whom she's truly compatible?
  There's a huge difference between seeing someone for who he really is and loving him anyway, and desperately latching onto "a good provider" and hoping he stays at the office a lot."
• "Um..."Barry" cheated on "Rachel" with her best friend during the engagement. I do remember that much from Friends, and I'm fairly sure that wouldn't have made for a good relationship."
• "i had a mr.ok. did. not.want. i wanted to vomit every time he kissed me. he is incredibly successful, not bad looking, and treated me like a queen, but i just couldn't do it." (Been there, done this. A lot. Do not recommend either.)
• "I actually cried reading that article. I'm the most paranoid person ever. I'm 17 and am terrified that I'll never get married, and will end up settling or something. Like I'm reaching my "ZOMG MARRIAGABLE PEAK!!" Fuck you Lori Gottlieb."
• "Ok this article pissed me off to no end and I have to weigh in. First, I have a mother who asked me to "just settle and get married." The fact that my mother is still in the process of divorcing a man who ruined her finances and with whom she spent 30 miserable years didn't apparently teach her anything about "settling." Second, this twat is just a miserable human being and rather than wondering why and how she can fix the things she's uncomfortable with she's focusing on the easiest answer "because I'm single." If you're miserable and self-hating when you're single, you'll be miserable and self-hating when you're married. Marriage is not some magical panacea for whatever ails you. In sum, Laurie grow the fuck up and get a (better) therapist, but don't put your shit on me and my single ass."
• "Does anyone know if this woman has ever been married before? Because the way she talks about it makes me think that she has no clue what it's like, and by extension just how much it makes your life suck when you have to share it with someone you are not totally into sharing it with."
• "I've been a bridesmaid/maid of honour five times. Once for my roommate who was getting married the week after she turned thirty and was already convinced she was washed up. She wanted a husband and a baby and she married the first guy who was too lazy to run. Right up to the ceremony I kept telling her that she could still back out, I could wear the dress again. She didn't back out. The longed-for baby (now referred to as Demon Child from Hell) was 3 yrs in coming. That's because, as I found out from another mutual friend, she married that guy knowing he was impotent. THAT I call settling."

• "My favorite part is where she rationalizes settling because she doesn't want to be old and alone.
  I settled. TWICE. First I rationalized that "well, he's only a LIGHT drug user" - until his high, steroided ass threw me through a plate glass window. That lasted for eight whole months.
  Ten years later at thirty*mumble* I settled for a guy because he was a "friend" and it just seemed easier that way. No tingles, no sexual spark whatsoever. He was easily the biggest internet addict I've ever encountered; he was essentially asexual. What I thought was friendship wasn't really anything but him being too fucking apathetic to move into a real relationship. That lasted for four years.
  I am blissfully alone and hope to be for the rest of my life. If anyone drops by in the meantime for a pizza and some hot sex, they're welcome to stay until I tell them they need to go. My friends and family have been and will continue to be my best, most reliable support system. Plus I don't have to listen to them snore or pick up their goddam dirty laundry." Hello? Statistics much? The *vast* majority of women outlive their spouses. Statistics say that no matter what you settle (or please god don't settle) for, you're most likely gonna be alone at the end of it all. And I'm not quite sure where the tragedy is in that.

More comments elsewhere...

• "I think my father-in-law's advice to his sons sums it up best - "Marry someone you like and like talking to, otherwise you'll end up banging some secretary in ten years."
• "At the end she says, “I know all this now, and yet—here’s the problem—much as I’d like to settle, I can’t seem to do it.” She then proceeds with a new round of plausible excuses as to why settling at her age is a bad idea. It was a good idea before, but not now. In other words, she can always come up with an excuse for not settling."
• "For many women, the challenge is to find someone who will not make us profoundly and deeply unhappy. Or, heck, even those who don't initiate a gag reflex. One of my best friends threw up after the latest guy kissed her."

Metafilter:

• "I will not deny the pain of loneliness or how tough it can be for middle-aged and older women to find suitable partners -- but it is simply pathetic how mainstream conversation of these issues applies the same disordered, reductive, shallow thinking to addressing, much less resolving it.
  I am fairly certain by the time The commodification of every goddamn last human emotion leads to a way of thinking so thin and sad that "Carrie should have gone for Aidan" becomes an acceptable shorthand for one of the most profound and mysterious experiences of being human: falling in love. I must be getting old myself, because this must be the thousandth iteration of this article I have read since first cracking open Faludi as an undergrad. I never would have dreamed I'd still be reading this kind of glib, insulting, and poorly argued horseshit all these years later, much less that it would have actually got worse. I'm 40 I'll be so fed up I'll just be randomly screaming bullshit all day and flipping off magazine kiosks. If anyone -- male or female -- who feels the same way would like to join me you are more than welcome to come along. It'll be like the Red Hat Society, but with fewer hats and more court dates and swears."
• "Yeah, you *should* settle. You should settle for doing what you want with your life, on your terms within the constraints (or fighting the constraints) placed on you by your culture."
• "If she and her fellow sperm-bank-mom friend are so desperate for a trench-buddy that they'd consider marrying closeted gay men, why don't they just shack up together themselves? They apparently don't care about sex, or even if the thought of touching their partner revolts them. They clearly don't care about social stigma--at this point a single sperm bank mom probably gets as many evil eyes from squares as the average lesbian mom couple. They're on the same page as far as having kids is concerned, obviously. And they already know they like hanging out at the park together. The least they could do is watch each other's kids while they take turns eating their picnic."
• "I find it a little disturbing that this woman was in her forties before she figured out that a short guy with an "unfortunate nose" could still be a good boyfriend. I had that worked out when I was fourteen."

Hugo has settled and wouldn't recommend it:
"I mean, it’s not as if there aren’t dozens of books and articles out there aimed at headstrong young women warning that if they don’t get hitched and start breeding early, they’ll miss their chance at the deepest and most satisfying source of happiness that the be-ovaried can ever know. It’s an old trope: the wiser older sister figure presenting her own story of woe as a cautionary tale.

My third wife and I “settled.” When we met (on Matchmaker.com!), we were remarkably compatible. I was a new Christian; “A” was also an adult convert. We were both in academia, of similar age and from similar family backgrounds. The conversation between us flowed easily from our first date forward. “A” was finishing her doctorate at Fuller Seminary here in Pasadena, immersed in a evangelical culture that frowned on pre-marital sex and strongly encouraged marriage. Most of her friends were already married, and many had children. A was eager for marriage. I had already been divorced twice, of course, but those divorces had been “pre-conversion.” As a “new creation in Christ”, I longed for a different kind of relationship. A seemed to fit my bill, and I hers.
There was one problem: a lack of heat, of passion, of intense attraction. Oh, neither of us thought the other hideous. But there was never, ever, a moment of “I want to rip your clothes off right this second” between us. Having had a very colorful sexual past before my conversion, I was at a point in my life where I had little faith in chemistry. I’d made decisions throughout my teens and twenties based largely on desire; now I was determined to make one on the basis of spiritual compatibility. A, whose pre-conversion past was not entirely dissimilar, felt the same way.
A. and I were engaged within a few weeks of meeting; evangelical Christians tend to move faster through the courtship stage. Our families were thrilled; we were told over and over again how “perfect” we were for each other. We had similar interests, similar politics, similar cultural vocabularies. We were polite and kind to each other. A and I never raised our voices when we argued, and our arguments were few. And once married, behind the bedroom door, there was no heat, no chemistry, no intensity. I knew something was missing, but I was willing to settle. My logic was simple: I’d had my wild experiences in my youth. Now I was in my thirties, a believer, a youth leader and a future (I hoped) father. It seemed right to trade in passion for affection, to trade in heat for kindness. A and I had a lot of kindness in our marriage.
As we hit our first anniversary, and started trying for a baby, the tension over this absence of chemistry grew and grew. We were still unfailingly polite, and being the highly educated and verbally dexterous folks we were, we talked endlessly about ways to “generate more intensity.” All failed. One day, A said to me: “Hugo, if I had any memory of once having really, really wanted you, then I could build on that. I could nurture that flame back into a fire. I’m so sorry, there never was a time when I felt that for you.” I wasn’t offended, or even hurt — because I felt the same way. In a calm, sad voice I told A that I felt the same way. “We settled too much”, she said. And I couldn’t help but agree."

• "So, reading the article with my experience of being the settle–ee was alternately anger-inducing and pain-inducing. She needs a shrink, pronto. I couldn’t get past the how could you do that to another person, this “settling”?!. Because I guarantee you, no matter how little time she spends with her future settled-upon husband (the saving grace being that with the buzz this article is creating, she’d better be fluent in a foreign language to find one), he will know. You can’t hide that level of disappointment, and you can’t do it over time."
• "I think much of Gottlieb’s article is simply about wanting to fit into traditional/normal/accepted society and has little to nothing to do with love."

And, of course, Amanda:

"Here’s a fun idea: Let’s ask someone who settled! After all, they probably did so after a period of being alone, so they have full information. True, you’d have to find someone willing to say, on paper, “I hate having to touch my husband’s cock, I often want to stab my ears out with a fork to listen to him ramble on, but I put up with him because you have to pay a nanny to help you out, but a husband actually brings in income.” It could be used against you in the divorce proceedings and all that.
So we’re going to have to settle (See what I did there?) for a woman who’s never been married, and certainly never to someone she doesn’t really love, tell us how great she imagines a loveless marriage probably is.

What kind of person listens to others complain non-stop and walks away thinking, “Man, I want some of that!” That’s an extreme case of fitting the evidence to the theory. Her desperation to believe that any man is better than no man makes me wonder if she’d envy someone going through an acrimonious divorce. “At least she’s married until the lawyers finally hammer it out!”

Her entire argument boils down to: Husbands—cheaper than nannies. Except you don’t have to fuck your nanny on occasion to keep her from being suspicious about your motivations.

At this point, you realize the entire article is reactionary bullshit the author herself doesn’t believe. How do I know? If she really thinks that being married to a closeted gay man who exchanges housework for her willingness to pretend she doesn’t know what he does on weekend nights, then she would go husband-hunting at her local ex-gay meeting. If you want to be a beard, then there’s an easy, quick, no-nonsense solution for you. I don’t see how it couldn’t work.

Yes, she recommended marrying someone whose touch grosses you out before you go it alone. Just for the health of your internal body organs that don’t do well under stress, I would not recommend this. It’s like being a very badly paid whore that only has one john."

• "I think she makes this assumption that if you settle for a loveless marriage, you’ll stay *exactly* the same person that you are now, but with a built-in babysitter/handyman/ dinner companion sleeping next to you. Uh no: As Amanda points out, the emotional and mental stress and turmoil will break you down.
  And newsflash: women have tried this settling strategy for centuries, and there’s a reason why it’s not so much in vogue now."

• "I was waiting for a quote like “Isn’t getting hit occasionally a small price to pay for not being alone? I have long envied battered wives because at least they’ve got someone to share their lives with.” I don’t suppose the author thought to include the natural progression of her premise?"
• "She wants a child and a household and, truth be told, it’s tough to do that alone. Plus, you get the benefit of pooling your resources and exploiting economies of scale. You know what though? A lot of people grew up seeing their parents live their lives as though their marriage was a tense and difficult business partnership and decided that they weren’t interested in running such a business."
• "You know, on some level, I think two platonic-type friends shacking up to raise kids and provide themselves with some domesticity could be a nice idea. However, she seems to be proposing lying about it. Not okay."
• "Who on earth would saddle their child with a morose, rude, clearly issue-riddled step-parent who has a “strong interest in terrorists”?"
• "And I can understand wanting an extra set of hands to take care of the kid, but how likely is it that any of the rude, self-absorbed losers she describes would be an attentive daddy?

  Haven’t you heard that women become hideously ugly and unlovable after around age 25, whereas men remain gorgeous forever? It’s true. Many fat, bald, middle-aged dateless men have assured me of this fact."

• "I really want to know who finds it enlightening, amusing, or otherwise worthwhile to include articles in mainstream publications from authors who have absolutely no real-world experience of the subject they’re discussing. I assume they don’t publish woodworking articles written by people who have never picked up a handsaw or movie reviews by people who haven’t seen the movies. I guess when it’s only people’s emotional lives you’re discussing, it doesn’t really matter what the hell advice you give."

• "As for settling, this chick totally needs to find a platonic female friend who’s divorced with kids, and shack up with *her* in a roommate/share child care duties situation. Because men are trained to suck at giving women emotional support and doing child care tasks. it’s rare to find a man who has escaped the training. The only excuse to put up with a man who will dump most of the child care and housework on you, which is most of them, is that you love him and think he’s hot. If you’re just looking for a helpmeet, and you don’t want sex out of the deal, you are totally better off with a woman, preferably a woman who is also heterosexual and also has kids, so she won’t want something from you you don’t want to give and she and you can trade child care duties. Men in general are *only* useful for love and sex; picking one you don’t really like all that much to live with is like getting a large barky dog who’s emotionally needy when you live in a tiny apartment and don’t really like dogs anyway.
  (Yes, there are men who escaped the training in being totally useless to women. They probably already have girlfriends who love them. If you’re settling, you’re settling for the guys no other woman wants, and that’s *not* going to be the ones who are genuinely helpful and supportive of women.)"

• “[If] you get a cold shiver down your spine at the thought of embracing a certain guy, but you enjoy his company more than anyone else’s,” you reeeeeallly need to find new people to hang out with. Badly."
• "I suspect we all have “that” friend who dates forever and grows progressively more anxious as the years go by and eventually becomes a bit obsessed and desperate. She’s probably a small minority of women, great, but so what — this article is for her. I know this girl, she’s my best friend. She dated married guys and stereotypical assh0le types through her 20’s, drinks a lot, has a dead end job and has this vision that a man will materialize out of the mist and get her a house in westchester and save her from being a receptionist. That said, she refuses to even MEET guys she’s set up with if they aren’t banker types."
• "He also couldn’t help noticing the word she keeps avoiding: money. As in, that’s what she wants to marry. It’s a 1,000-word defense of being a gold-digger."
• "You know what I like whispering in my boyfriend’s ear to get him all hot and bothered, by the way?  “My, we have such a functional relationship. We are so healthy. We have successfully navigated our way into social expectation.”
• "Gottlieb doesn’t make me angry, but she does frustrate me. All the young women I meet have these weird limitations on their goals because (you guessed it) they want to get married and have a family. Oh no, I don’t want to go to med school, because i want to have time for a family. They have been sold a lie, and stories like Gottlieb’s reinforce it. My status (happy most days) isn’t affected by her advice, but I do resent what it does to the youngsters out there."
• "Do *not* marry a man for emotional support. If you don’t love him, and he expects that you do, he will drain you dry. If you don’t love him, and he doesn’t love you, he will be no support to you; rely on female friends. Do *not* marry a man for financial support. Men and their expectation that you will do all the housework will cost you in your own career; expect to have a career and succeed at it, and if a man comes along well and good, but don’t look at them as walking wallets. Do not marry a man because he’ll help with the kids. He won’t. Because you don’t love him and he knows it, he will never have the attachment to the kids that you do; you won’t be able to hide how much more you love them than you love him, and he will resent them and be distant from them. In fact, do not marry a man you don’t love. Ever. It’s hard enough to live with them when you love them."
• "ONE DAY you will actually meet someone who makes little bluebirds encircle your head. If at that time you have two kids with your ok husband, you are going to find yourself in the position of Anna Karininna (or some facisimile thereof not involving a train). Very few people have the actual resove not to follow their hearts, plus their unsatisfied lower regions, when this happens. You will then have the pleasure of breaking up your childrens’ home and dissing the poor husband, who may have done NOTHING but what you expected. If you risk this scenario with a loveless marriage or something close to it, in my book you have no respect for yourself, the man, or your future children."

And finally, there's this story.

"Even her life before the death of her first husband doesn't sound like much fun. At one point I ask if she regretted not having children with him.
"Oh it wasn't that sort of marriage," she says candidly. "I was more like a daughter to Mr Clarke." (She always called him Mr Clarke, which speaks volumes about their union.)
"The thing is that I didn't love him. I didn't know what love was when I got married the first time. I had lost my mother, my father and my brother, all within a year, and I was looking for someone to take care of me. I knew that; he knew that. It wasn't love, but then, I didn't know what I was missing."
Of course, marrying again - and within a few weeks of being introduced to James - raised many eyebrows.
"Even my solicitor phoned me up and said: 'What do you actually know about this man?' But when I told him that James was quite a gentleman, and former mayor of Torquay to boot, he came round.
"Now all my friends think we are made for each other - and we are! We laugh all the time. Our neighbours must wonder what on earth we find to giggle about.
"I never doubted it. The minute I looked into this lovely man's eyes, I knew that I loved him. It's what I had been waiting all my life for, and I never expected to feel it. Now I feel it every day, and I can't get enough of it."
She collapses into the duvet. This husband certainly doesn't get called Mr Mason. "Oh no, I call him James, darling, sweetheart, lover."