Marry Him or Perhaps Not, Because That's CRAZY...

I was once engaged to a nice enough guy. Had I married him I would have been settling. Not because there was necessarily anything wrong with him, but I wasn't in love. I sometimes think about what my life would have been like had I ended up with him. I can tell you with a fair amount of certainty that I would have eventually become unhappy and more than likely would have ended up with 2.5 kids, a house, a dog and would most certainly be a divorce statistic.

Why on earth am I telling you this? Because I came across this article. She's a woman who answered her ticking biological clock with a sperm donor. I commend her for being a single mother, but the part I don't understand is her suggestion that if you don't find Mr. Right, and you want to have children, that you are in a lose-lose situation - settle now or settle later, you'll eventually have to settle if you want a man. She maintains that women out there are turning away perfectly good men because of annoying habits. She suggests that you should look past these things because eventually your hot romance will turn into a partnership where these things don't matter. Then she goes on to say that most married women, even when complaining about their awful husbands, would rather keep them than be alone. This is her supporting evidence that settling is ok because aren't we all really eventually in a situation where it's a wash.

So I gave up a relationship that surely would have yielded a perfectly fine family. Someone who was similar enough in family values and probably would have been a good father, all for the far flung idea that I could be and wanted to be in love. I used to joke that women are ruined by romance novels. We have these fabricated high expectations about what a relationship should be and that some day some guy will sweep us off our feet.

Anyone who has ever read a romance novel or watched a chick flick knows the general plot line - boy and girl meet and dislike one another, boy and girl have bonding experience and have crazy monkey sex, a 3rd party interferes and causes some massive misunderstanding and it appears that true love will go unrealized and then finally they are reunited, have crazy monkey sex and vow their undying love.

I still believe that's a pile of crap. However I will say this. A smart man (whom I almost dated but didn't because I ditched the opportunity to meet him for the chance to go out with a guy who turned out to be a loser) said to me after listening to me complain that a guy I was seeing didn't call me enough, "Hey, if you know that's what's important to you and he's not getting it done then why do you stick around - he's not going to change?". Good point.

My dating criteria became very simple:

An all around nice guy.
A guy who calls me enough so I know where I rate in his life.
A guy who is not intimidated by me.
A guy who is smarter than me in areas that I am not smart but smart enough to know that I am smarter than him in some areas too.
A guy who knows when I disagree with him that I'm not fighting, I'm just discussing.
A guy who shares similar family values.
A guy with whom I have some shared interests.
A guy that I like sleeping with.

Simple.

I found all of these things in my husband. I felt like I could spend the rest of my life with him the second day I knew him. Crazy? Sure, but it's true. It took him a bit longer, but that's why I like him - I'm the snap judgement, he's the ponder-er, but we usually end up the same place. So in short, I didn't need to settle because he was the one who fit. That's not to say he's perfect (nor am I), he's just not doing the specific things that would have been deal breakers for me.

He used to tell me that he liked that I wasn't a crazy female. What he fails to recognize is that in almost every previous relationship, I was a crazy female. We've all been like that at one point or another. It's the simple fact that he met the criteria which made me a happy person. I was getting everything I needed, so I didn't have to go all psycho on him. Providing you're not actually crazy, I think this logic holds water.

Perhaps we won't always be in wedded bliss but nothing can take away that we started there. I don't harbor any resentment around what might have been and I don't believe he does either. Sure, I complain about stupid crap he does - his inane amount of socks, his inability to clean-up anything...ever and his amazing propensity to dawdle. At the end of the day I wouldn't trade him in because I love him, not because I don't want to be alone.

So I think this woman's suggestion is absolute crap. If you're a relatively well grounded person, don't settle, just prioritize your needs and be patient. Oh, and be sure to get really drunk every once in a while. I'm just sayin'...that's what worked for me.