I am pretty amazed by the force of nature that my friend Lori Gottlieb’s new book, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough has become — especially now that it is Valentine’s Day. Yesterday, Lori Gottlieb appeared in a segment on NPR‘s Marketplace, How I fell into a romantic recession (here are all of the Lori Gottlieb mentions on NPR). Well, Marry Him is almost ubiquitous. Here are some praise:
New York Times Sunday Book Review “Editors’ Pick:”
“An unexpected gem. Honest and darkly comic… the truth can be liberating.”
Book Review – ‘Marry Him – The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough,’ by Lori Gottlieb: Home Alone By AMY FINNERTY
Lori Gottlieb offers herself up as Exhibit A — that’s A for “Alone” — in this unsparing exploration of the contemporary mating scene. Part cautionary memoir, part field study, her account of her own stalled search for a husband is honest and darkly comic.
While many books about relationships flatter women and promote strategies to attract elusive men — don’t sleep with him, let him “chase you till you catch him” — Gottlieb asks readers to reconsider the less-than-perfect men who are available to them, and to do so while still young enough to close the deal.
Like many of us, Gottlieb went shopping with a mental checklist of attributes for her fantasy husband. Believing that the One was at large, she squandered opportunities with seemingly flawed, flesh-and-blood men.
Expanding on a provocative article she wrote for The Atlantic Monthly in 2008, and interviewing, among many others, therapists, members of the clergy, and both single and married people, Gottlieb makes a case that many women today end up alone because they hold men to insanely high standards. The feminist ideal of having it all, on our own terms, she argues, “is exactly how many of us empowered ourselves out of a good mate.”
The author treads good-naturedly over taboos, asking whether the “Go, girl!” ethos has run amok and our hard-won professional identities have become lonely traps. While she believes the workplace can be a fertile hunting ground, she also notes that men are often less impressed than we expect by our brilliant careers.
Gottlieb’s triumph of experience over hope is not as depressing as it sounds. She skewers herself and her post-feminist peers so accurately and disarmingly that we wish we knew an unattached man to fix her up with. She convinces us that we women are simply too fussy, entitled and downright delusional about our own worth in the mating marketplace. We overanalyze and seek undiluted sexual and intellectual fulfillment, thus setting men up for failure.
Gottlieb’s female subjects complain: He “brought me flowers, but cheesy ones.” “He was too optimistic.” He “loved me too much.” One whines about a boyfriend’s onerous demands for sex, even while reporting that it was the best sex she’d ever had. Another confides that “boring guys aren’t funny, but they think you’re funny.” Gottlieb’s own checklist, now discarded, included the following specs: “talented but humble,” “creative but not an artist,” “over 5-10 but under 6 feet.” But her male subjects add jarring perspective. Women may hold the cards when they’re in their 20s, one 35-year-old man says, but by the time they’re in their 30s, “it’s the opposite.”
A psychologist tells Gottlieb he is seeing in women “a heightened sense of entitlement that previous generations didn’t have,” adding that our mothers didn’t expect to be thrilled and charmed at all times by their husbands. Today’s woman, by contrast, often “sees herself as too good for an ordinary relationship.”
Many female readers may fairly retort that feminism’s gains were well worth the sacrifice, that plenty of fine women will date anything with a pulse (such are the grim demographics), that anyone looking for a husband has never had one. But Gottlieb asks those who want to marry not to despair. She believes that a seasoned older woman can learn to love the kind of (shortish, shy, not-so-wealthy) man she once spurned in her alpha-or-bust days.
By the time she has figured this out, she has resorted to speed dating and professional matchmakers. Many men her age want younger women, so she starts seeing “Sheldon2,” a widower bearing no resemblance to her original ideal. She didn’t lower her standards; she took the plunge and changed them. A “contented calm,” shared values and an “eerily on-target mental shorthand” make her short time with him an unexpected delight. The same can be said of this book. The truth isn’t pretty, but it can be liberating.
Amy Finnerty is an editor at World Affairs.
Well, I thought it was a fun book to read — I received an advance review copy and the book is a lot more personal than you would think, and a lot less preachy than you believe — and it is a lot funnier than you would expect as Lori is a comedy writer as much as she is anything.
What I liked the most about the book, nicknamed “Settle” by lots of people online, is that it makes me, a single man approaching 40, feel like a million bucks. If you’re a single man north of 35, then this is the book for you!
In much the same way that Lori is warns girls and women to re-asses their post-30 and post-40 rapidly-declining market values towards a more realistic “what the dating market will bear” series of expectations of not only what sort of man a thirty-something woman can “get” but what sort of man she can win with marriage as the goal (and there’s one secret Lori doesn’t even address in the book*).
Here are more mentions in the media and radio stories.
* Even when a woman attracts her very handsome, very funny, very tall, and very rich prince charming to sleep with her it doesn’t mean that that same sort of fella would consider dating to say nothing of marrying her — there’s a double standard amongst men (as there is with women) as to the sort of woman (age, beauty, size, etc) we’ll take to bed versus the sort of woman we’ll marry — and this cuts both ways because women do that same thing all the time — it has surely happened to yours truly.
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“Today’s woman, by contrast, often “sees herself as too good for an ordinary relationship.” I agree! But a huge difference between my mother’s generation and mine is that I don’t ‘need’ a man. I might ‘want’ a man in my life. Women didn’t make as much money so their goal was marriage to obtain that extra paycheck. Now that women are successful in many ways, they can support themselves and many choose to do that. I love being on my own! I date when I want to so I feel I have the best of both worlds!