Verbs vs. Nouns (public version)
Lori Gottlieb's recent piece in The Atlantic is annoying. It isn't just her obvious belief that her circle of friends is exactly like everyone else -- and therefore the conclusions she draws based on a couple of chit-chats with her girlfriends are valid of society at large. It is that she is so damn nearsighted about the whole thing. In all her fretting about being husband-less (and self-conscious assertions of her feminist cred, she can only conceive of the problem like this:
By the time 35th-birthday-brunch celebrations roll around for still-single women, serious, irreversible life issues masquerading as “jokes” creep into public conversation. ...At their core, (these jokes) pose one of the most complicated, painful, and pervasive dilemmas many single women are forced to grapple with nowadays: Is it better to be alone, or to settle?
My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection.
I really, really dislike that the choice is presented as "settle or hold out for Prince Charming and risk dying old, alone surrounded by cats and tottering piles of National Geographics". Never once does her mind flit to the possibility that the mythological man-on-a-white-horse is an absolutely unrealistic fairy tale that otherwise intelligent women inexplicably believe in. Oh sure, she does toss off the observation that the 'man of your dreams', "doesn’t exist, precisely because you dreamed him up" (italics in the original), but she doesn't pursue that line of thought. In fact, it is this evidence of the author being almost, but not quite, not lost that is so painful.
A case in point: she does observe (rightly) that, "All marriages, of course, involve compromise". But two paragraphs later, she recounts all the guys she didn't "settle" for and eventually broke up with, including, "someone who appeared to be highly compatible with me- we had much in common, and strong physical chemistry- but while our sensibilities were similar, they proved to be a half-note off, so we never quite felt in harmony, or never viewed the world through quite the same lens." The guy wasn't her 100% perfect fairy-tale prince, so she broke up with him? Because marrying a mate who is a mere 98% perfect match would be "settling"? Did she think that all of the "compromise" would be on his side? Or that it would be magically unnecessary because, he'd be 100% perfect? Methinks Ms. Gottlieb has a reality problem.
Again, she is right in her observation that, "what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship." But she misses the point that the challenge and the beauty of marriage is not only finding a person who has both qualities or in bringing out both of those qualities in yourself, but balancing the incandescent passion with the workaday realities of life, and allowing your bond to grow deeper and wider with time and experience. There is no such thing as perfect, because that would imply that either the people or the relationship had crystallized -- frozen in form. People evolve, circumstances change (sometimes from minute to minute), and the relationship grows, too. Marriage isn't a noun -- it is a verb -- a vast dance in which you'll sometimes move with perfect grace, and other time trod upon your partner's toes. And sometimes life will throw in some plates for you to juggle, too. And you just need to keep moving -- laugh when you drop a plate, forgive your partner when he steps on your toes (and beg forgiveness when he steps on yours) -- and realize that marriage isn't a place, isn't a goal, isn't a thing at all. It is a process, just like people are processes.
So Lori, honey, you'll never find your perfect man, and you aren't perfect, either. But the dilemma facing you isn't "settle or not settle?", but "when will you realize that perfection isn't an option?". Because it is only after realizing this that people can go about being imperfect together in an imperfect world. And I'll tell you -- after a while you realize that even when your feet are sore and your partner does the funky chicken when the band is playing a waltz, when you dance with the right partner, imperfection can be perfectly beautiful.
By the time 35th-birthday-brunch celebrations roll around for still-single women, serious, irreversible life issues masquerading as “jokes” creep into public conversation. ...At their core, (these jokes) pose one of the most complicated, painful, and pervasive dilemmas many single women are forced to grapple with nowadays: Is it better to be alone, or to settle?
My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection.
I really, really dislike that the choice is presented as "settle or hold out for Prince Charming and risk dying old, alone surrounded by cats and tottering piles of National Geographics". Never once does her mind flit to the possibility that the mythological man-on-a-white-horse is an absolutely unrealistic fairy tale that otherwise intelligent women inexplicably believe in. Oh sure, she does toss off the observation that the 'man of your dreams', "doesn’t exist, precisely because you dreamed him up" (italics in the original), but she doesn't pursue that line of thought. In fact, it is this evidence of the author being almost, but not quite, not lost that is so painful.
A case in point: she does observe (rightly) that, "All marriages, of course, involve compromise". But two paragraphs later, she recounts all the guys she didn't "settle" for and eventually broke up with, including, "someone who appeared to be highly compatible with me- we had much in common, and strong physical chemistry- but while our sensibilities were similar, they proved to be a half-note off, so we never quite felt in harmony, or never viewed the world through quite the same lens." The guy wasn't her 100% perfect fairy-tale prince, so she broke up with him? Because marrying a mate who is a mere 98% perfect match would be "settling"? Did she think that all of the "compromise" would be on his side? Or that it would be magically unnecessary because, he'd be 100% perfect? Methinks Ms. Gottlieb has a reality problem.
Again, she is right in her observation that, "what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship." But she misses the point that the challenge and the beauty of marriage is not only finding a person who has both qualities or in bringing out both of those qualities in yourself, but balancing the incandescent passion with the workaday realities of life, and allowing your bond to grow deeper and wider with time and experience. There is no such thing as perfect, because that would imply that either the people or the relationship had crystallized -- frozen in form. People evolve, circumstances change (sometimes from minute to minute), and the relationship grows, too. Marriage isn't a noun -- it is a verb -- a vast dance in which you'll sometimes move with perfect grace, and other time trod upon your partner's toes. And sometimes life will throw in some plates for you to juggle, too. And you just need to keep moving -- laugh when you drop a plate, forgive your partner when he steps on your toes (and beg forgiveness when he steps on yours) -- and realize that marriage isn't a place, isn't a goal, isn't a thing at all. It is a process, just like people are processes.
So Lori, honey, you'll never find your perfect man, and you aren't perfect, either. But the dilemma facing you isn't "settle or not settle?", but "when will you realize that perfection isn't an option?". Because it is only after realizing this that people can go about being imperfect together in an imperfect world. And I'll tell you -- after a while you realize that even when your feet are sore and your partner does the funky chicken when the band is playing a waltz, when you dance with the right partner, imperfection can be perfectly beautiful.