Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough

When I look at my friend's marriages, with their routine day-to-dayness, they actually seem far more romantic than any dating relationship might be. Dating seems romantic, but for the most part it's an extended audition. Marriage seems boring, but for the most part it's a state of comfort and acceptance. Dating is about grand romantic gestures that mean little over the long-term. Marriage is about small acts of kindness that bond you over a lifetime. It's quietly romantic. He makes her tea. She goes to the doctor appointment with him. They listen to each other's daily trivia. They put up with each other's quirks. They're there for each other.

Next time you're about to rule out some guy because he's not your ideal, try to focus on the good things about him, because some guy is going to have to focus on the good things about you, even though he may have wanted someone more easygoing or taller. Every time you start to dissect some guy, note that he's willfully ignoring all of this in order to go out with you.

What makes for a good marriage isn't necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Marriage isn't a passion-fest; it's a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane and often boring non-profit business. And I mean this in a good way.

Look for reasons to say 'yes' instead of 'no,' he reminded me. Screen in rather than constantly screening out. Always ask yourself this: If an interesting guy were right in front of you, would you honestly turn that person away because of a few pounds or inches, or a sentence in a profile that you don't like? If so, that's fine. Just don't complain when you can't find anybody suitable because you've eliminated every potential guy on a technicality. Because if these guys eliminated people on technicalities, they probably wouldn't date you, either.

You can let more people into the mix who could possibly make you happy. Or you can hold out for that two percent of men who you assume meet your requirements, and hope that coincidentally, someone in that two percent feels that you're in his two percent. And even then, the people you assume to meet your requirements might in fact not be the right fit for you.

I thought I should call a matchmaker. For me, this seemed like a radical step. It never occurred to me to hire a matchmaker when I was younger because I always believed I'd meet a man on my own. He'd be sitting next to me on an airplane, waiting in line behind me at the dry cleaner, working in the same office attending the same party, hanging out at the same coffeehouse. It seemed ridiculous now, when I thought about the odds of this happening. After all, we don't subject other important aspects of out lives to pure chance. When you want to get a job you don't just hang out in the lobbies of office buildings, hoping an employer will strike up a conversation with you. When you want to buy a house, you don't walk aimlessly from neighborhood to neighborhood on your own, hoping to spot a house that happens to be for sale, matches your personal taste and contains the appropriate number of bedrooms and bathrooms. That's too random. If that's your only method of house hunting, you might end up homeless. So you hire a real estate broker to show you the potential homes that meet your needs. By the same token, why not hire a matchmaker to show you potential partners?

Instead of wondering, Am I happy?, maximizers wonder, Is this the best I can do? They experience what Schwartz calls regret in anticipation of making a decision. As he puts it in his book, "You imagine how you'll feel if you discover that there was a better option available. And that leap of imagination may be all it takes to plunge you into a mire of uncertainty.

I told Greenwald that I didn’t consider these factors when I was ten years younger and waiting for just the right guy to pop into my life. It seemed reasonable to think that the longer I searched, the better the guy I’d end up with. But it’s faulty logic, she said: The longer you wait, the less likely you are to find someone better than you’ve already met.

Like me, the women I met with at the bar were embarrassed by the way they’d dismissed men in the past, evaluating every guy as either too-something or not-something-enough. These guys didn’t fit our image of the person we thought we’d end up with, leaving us to end up with nobody

What’s the difference between settling and compromising? When it comes to marriage, what can we live with, and what can we live without? How long does it make sense to hold out for someone better—who we may never find, and who may not exist or be available to us even if he did—when we could be happy with the person right in front of us?

So, at least in the beginning of a relationship, I expected to be dazzled (even if that meant being so distracted by my object of affection that I nearly lost my job and risked my very livelihood). I expected to “just know” that he was The One (even if it often happened that a year later, I’d “just know” that I wanted to break up). I expected to feel some sort of divine connection (even if that meant being in a constant state of nausea and having an obsessive need to check my voice mail every thirty minutes). This was what “falling in love” felt like, right?

A half shelf-life for a woman is about thirty-five. The real shelf life is forty. Once you’re forty and dating online, no guy who wants to have kids is willing to even meet you. Divorced guys who already have kids will meet a forty-year-old, but many of them have had vasectomies.

Our marriage is successful because it's built not on an unattainable fantasy of perfection, but out of the realization that love is created, not presented.

Lisa Clampitt, the matchmaker in New York who used to be a social worker, told me that often what seems like "chemistry" might be emotional baggage from childhood. That's why if she sees a client repeatedly going after men who aren't working out, she looks at the psychological roots of the attraction.

We're going out again," I announced at my final session with Evan. "But it's weird, because I don't feel the way I'm used to feeling. There was no chemistry, but I'm really looking forward to seeing him again." Evan smiled. "Isn't that chemistry?" he asked. "If you're excited to see someone again?

Love should increase over time, not start at a high," she said. "Real love is developed over time. It's about learning to trust, bond, and build a family together, with or without children. So I'm in favor of not overthinking yourself to death in the beginning. Women, especially, tend to rule people out too quickly.

As to your question--is there such a thing as a fairy tale romance? Prudie would say yes, and in fact she has had one. Alas, they do not endure. Fairy tales are to romance what fireworks are to the night sky. They are transient states...and while temporarily thrilling, not what one builds a life around.

Our must-haves and deal-breakers are the “what,” when they should be the “why.

Marriage isn’t a constant passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane nonprofit business.

Number one,” she said, “I look at whether the two people have common relationship goals. Number two, I look at values. Things like independence, family, religion, loyalty. Number three, what are the key qualities this person needs? You get no more than five. Things like, he has to be very intelligent. Number four, I look at shared interests. Interests are great because it’s bonding and stimulating and fun to share those, but the other things are more important for the long-term. I put shared interests last for that reason.

In reality, there are many people we could be happy with. It's just that your soul develops in different ways with different people.

But she wasn’t in love with him yet. She fell in love with her husband because of the way they disagreed with each other. “When everything’s great, it’s easy to fall in love,” she said. “But when you disagree—how you come to a consensus is very telling. My husband both met and exceeded my expectations. I have never once thought that I could have found someone better.” How different that was from our culture’s view of love, where having disagreements in the beginning of a relationship seems like the death knell. The beginning of a relationship is supposed to be like a honeymoon. A couple is supposed to feel totally in synch. Any deviation from that is a sign that you’re not compatible. But Madathil is saying it’s not whether you argue—its how you get through the arguments. And the more practice you have getting through those arguments gracefully, she told me, the less you’ll argue later.

It’s not about lowering your standards—it’s about maturing and having reasonable expectations.