Settle?
Read an interesting article in Atlantic Monthly today. The whole thing is worth reading.
She puts forth a solid case and I'm sure she'll get a metric ton of hate mail. I'm just not sure how much of it will be from her target audience, women around the 40 year mark. There really is (for most women) a biological clock.
I don't know that she's advocating 'settling' (though I'm sure that many people would see it that way) so much as reordering priorities. The things that look good to a girl in her twenties (excitement, danger and a cutting wit) don't translate well for fatherhood. Virtues like gentleness and a sense of humor do even if they don't pack the same thrill. In some important ways, I think our society fails to suggest to young men and women what kind of elements last and which ones wear out.
For the record, I don't think either the FP Gal or I settled for each other. If we'd met ten years earlier we probably wouldn't have really connected and we'd have been poorer for it. It took some bad experiences to get some of the nonsense knocked out of us so we'd be ready to recognize the important things in a partner. That's the tricky thing about experience. You can really only gain it through time and pain.
My friend and I, who, in fits of self-empowerment, had conceived our babies with donor sperm because we hadn’t met Mr. Right yet, surveyed the idyllic scene...The author continues and argues that women shouldn't hold out for that perfect love, but should be willing to settle for less.
But it was also decidedly not the dream. The dream, like that of our mothers and their mothers from time immemorial, was to fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Of course, we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).
She puts forth a solid case and I'm sure she'll get a metric ton of hate mail. I'm just not sure how much of it will be from her target audience, women around the 40 year mark. There really is (for most women) a biological clock.
I don't know that she's advocating 'settling' (though I'm sure that many people would see it that way) so much as reordering priorities. The things that look good to a girl in her twenties (excitement, danger and a cutting wit) don't translate well for fatherhood. Virtues like gentleness and a sense of humor do even if they don't pack the same thrill. In some important ways, I think our society fails to suggest to young men and women what kind of elements last and which ones wear out.
For the record, I don't think either the FP Gal or I settled for each other. If we'd met ten years earlier we probably wouldn't have really connected and we'd have been poorer for it. It took some bad experiences to get some of the nonsense knocked out of us so we'd be ready to recognize the important things in a partner. That's the tricky thing about experience. You can really only gain it through time and pain.
Comments
Anyway. Very interesting post. I never look at Hans and feel that I settled. I know that I am extremely lucky. Even when he plays computer games all night and begs me to read Wolverine comics. Every single guy I dated before him would have been settling. I know that with absolute certainty.