Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Settling for Mr. Good Enough?


"Marry Him!", Lori Gottlieb's article in The Atlantic recently stirred up quite a mess in the Singlehood domain. A BIG MESS. Gottlieb's article denotes that she's a woman who wanted a "traditional family", but turned to a sperm bank in order to begin her motherhood solo (her clock was ticking, her eggs wanted to hatch). Yet in light of that decision, in retrospect she argues:


"My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection... Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year."


What would make a single, empowered, self-sufficient, independent, woman suddenly wake up one day and realize that years ago she should have settled for the first guy that could have been a marriage prospect. Mid-life crisis? Single-parent crisis? Self-actualization crisis?

Seriously, are you kidding me? This is DESPERATION in the worst way.


Anyone...
who has witnessed or experienced the loss and hurt of divorce,
who has watched a loved one suddenly decide they've changed their sexual orientation,
who has undergone the pain and grief of infidelity,
who has come to the realization to find their spouse is a deadbeat addict / pervert / abuser / etc.
...would probably attest to it being a VERY BAD idea to settle.


All those little warning signs that pop up during dating...especially with a woman's intuition...are there to help protect your heart! Now, not that there aren't those girls out there who share the ‘George Costanza / Jerry Seinfeld-ian Complex’ of picking out the most random, petty attributes as "dealbreakers," but let's get real: if you know that ultimately you're settling for something that will only make you temporarily happy (and quite possibly miserable for decades to come), why in the world would you set yourself up for failure. You ultimately will still NEVER have control over your spouse's decisions. We have free will...all of us (especially in this "liberty and freedom for all country"). Statistically, the divorce rate is so high, if you choose to settle, your chances of a marriage-gone-really-bad would only greatly increase if you actively choose to settle for the wrong guy from the beginning.

C'mon! And to bring a child into that? That egocentric desperation is atrocious!

Perhaps Gottlieb has woken up to the nightmare she's created for herself. In going out on her own, creating a child from a Petri dish in order to fulfill a dream of having a family, she's realized that her non-traditional method has inhibited her from living life to the full. For herself, and for her fatherless child. Really? Don't purposefully procreate to try and solve the big mess known as your Life. Please don't. You only bring a child into this world that will ultimately be just as confused, and probably even more so than you are. And just because Gottlieb settled on a sperm bank in order to hatch an egg, she shouldn't be suggesting to others that they should settle in marriage because she regrets not settling earlier.


What a cyclical settling mess!

...and in the end, she's got Egg on her Face!


___________________

"Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires" Song of Songs 2:7b / 3:5b / 8:4b

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