The Atlantic Monthly had an interesting story on why women should settle for "Mr. Good Enough." Eugene Volokh had some insightful comments. I am sympathetic to the idea of modest expectations but I don’t favor cheerleading for settling. More precisely I worry about The Paradox of the Underrated (is Shawn Marion still underrated? Nope, and by the way Phoenix had nothing to lose from that deal). If this article talks you into the prospect of settling, settling will start to seem pretty good to you. If your expectations were too high in the first place you’ll keep your old set of unrealistic expectations (personalities and pathologies don’t change so quickly) and simply apply them to a new option, namely a marriage to a dullard. "Settling" works best when you are stuck on a desert island and you do not expect so much from your surrender to the inevitable. The AM article would do more good if it tried to convince people how terrible settling would be. You just have to plant the idea in people’s minds, as they’ll make their own decisions anyway.
In other words, "have modest expectations — it will be great for you!!!" can’t really be winning advice.
To somewhat the same effect are the comments Trudie made when I channeled her.
This sports economist thinks that Phoenix lost quite a bit in that trade.
I’m not sure the article is about how wonderful settling is. It’s more about how terrible the alternative is. I think that allows the author to argue in favor of settling without raising expectations.
One day I really need to write a “Modern Love” essay about the weirdness of seeing the entire Internet debate over whether your ex-girlfriend is correct in thinking that she should have settled. I like Amber’s take.
One issue that is not typically discussed is the fact that these expectations and preferences are defined over a multiple attributes. Maybe the problem is not that people are settling the expectations at the wrong level, but that they are giving more weight to the wrong attribute (e.g. education over charm, looks over humor, etc.). So maybe settling means being able to accept the tradeoffs. Accepting that one has to lower the expectation over one dimension to be able to have the required level over the other dimension.
I must cynically note that it is women who are being told to settle in the realm of marriage. Do you ever hear of men being advised (on a wholesale basis) to “settle” as far as their careers are concerned?
The original article is a bit over the top: By 40, if you get a cold shiver down your spine at the thought of embracing a certain guy, but you enjoy his company more than anyone else’s, is that settling or making an adult compromise?
Sorry, but outright physical revulsion is a dealbreaker. People whose company you enjoy but wouldn’t dream of getting physical with are called “friends”.
She also displays remarkably little insight or interest in a man’s point of view on any of this. It’s as if she’s sitting down with some chatty female friends on the set of The View and unilaterally coming up with a five-point plan for revolutionizing relationships, which will then be presented to the male half of the population as a fait accompli.
The author seems thinks that Rachel might have been happier marrying Barry in the opening episode of “Friends”, but seems to forget that it was revealed later in the first season that he had been cheating on her with her best friend for quite a while. I know these aren’t real people, but sometimes a repulsion against “settling” with someone is an indicator of other more serious problems, even if you’re not consciously aware of them yet.
I read the Atlantic article. My main problem with it was that the author was shallow and self-centered.
An earlier author covered the subject more effectively: Jane Austen. Remember why Charlotte marries the hideously self-satisfied and stupid Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice? She was poor. She had to settle. (If you don’t want to read it, PBS is televising a version of Pride and Prejudice.)
The same author wrote a previous article in 2005 in The Atlantic, about having a child as a single mother by artificial insemination. Some of it is sadly poignant, especially the part near the end where she speculates that she might someday change her current point of view and eventually adopt a “Mr. Good Enough” point of view (as she now evidently has).
Amusingly, she was even neurotically picky in selecting a sperm donor, for instance rejecting a religious Republican “in case those traits were stealthily genetic”.
Men do settle for careers that match their abilities all the time. But, as archer said, do you ever hear them being advised to settle? No. They need to be, to have a realistic view of the world, but they aren’t. The closest anyone will come is giving you a psych test and asking whether you will be a good “match” for a field, or sending you brochures for community college.
I’m not sure if this would be good for kids in a world full of optimists, but it seems like they should be raised to know that they’re not going to become President and they’re not going to marry Mrs. Right, so that they know they’ll have to work for what they can get.
Two forty year old woman Austrian economists walk into a bar. The first one said, “I really want a husband.” The second one said, “I can prove that you are lying.”
One reader, Kay, asks that I post the following comment for her (she was receiving an error message for some reason): “Lori Gottlieb’s article in the Atlantic brings an interesting perspective to your recent post: “is divorce bad for children?† Gottlieb was searching for what Stevenson and Wolfers might describe as hedonic marriage. When she didn’t find a man to fit her ideal of a hedonic partner, she had a child on her own. Now she concludes that she – and, one presumes, her child – might have been better off if she had thought less in terms of a hedonic ideal, and more in terms of “a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business.” That suggests that the question is not simply whether divorce is bad for children, but whether unrealistic expectations promote unhappy marriages, divorce, and, as in Gottlieb’s case, nonmarriage.
You are probably right that Gottlieb herself might have been unable to escape her expectations for Mr. Perfect even had she tried. But that doesn’t address the broader point that a dysfunctional social norm – soulmate marriage, hedonic marriage, or whatever you want to call it – itself can add to unhappiness, either because, as in Gottleib’s case, no partner is good enough, or as in the case of many divorcing couples and their children, because it asks more of marriage – alas! – than marriage usually provides. This expectation trap would help explain why second marriages are even more likely than the first to end in divorce (people who expect too much will find a second spouse as unsatisfying as the first), why children of divorce are themselves at greater risk of divorce, (kids learn about marriage largely from heir parents), and why there is so little evidence that marital happiness has increased (see Amato et.al Alone Together) despite the prevalence of divorce.”
Four women walk into the bar. Three men are there, and happy to see the gorgeous redhead in the middle. If they all try for the gorgeous redhead, it’s likely none of them will get her, and the other women don’t want to be second choice. Result? No one wins.
Let’s try this one: the three men decide to each go after one of the other three women. They are flattered that the men have picked them over the gorgeous redhead. Result? Three winners.
Sometimes settling is really good advice.
This is a little off topic but I believe that in urban setting there are too many distracting males causing women to set their sites to high. A majority of women cannot get the leaders of men. This would explain the effected of urbanization on rates of marriage.
Let’s try this one: the three men decide to each go after one of the other three women. They are flattered that the men have picked them over the gorgeous redhead. Result? Three winners.
This is a variation of pretty standard advice to men on the prowl. When approaching an attractive woman and her less attractive friend, always focus your attention on the friend. Not only will you automatically get a warmer response from the friend, but the attractive woman, not used to being snubbed for her wing(wo)man, will become worried and start vying for your attention and will become visibly competitive with her friend over it. By the end of the night, you’ll likely have your pick of either, or maybe both, women.
Christina:
Not only will you automatically get a warmer response from the friend, but the attractive woman, not used to being snubbed for her wing(wo)man, will become worried and start vying for your attention and will become visibly competitive with her friend over it.
Of course that only works in the prisoner’s dilemma Arnold outlines above if no-one defects (or is around to).
Another question: the author had a friend in a very similar situation, a middle aged woman with a sperm donated child (is that the correct congugation; donated? Is this one of those “charity begins at home” deals?). Why was shacking up with her friend in the same situation not an option?
And no, not in a sexual, “lets get lesbian and have pillow fights in our bra and panties” male fantasy kinda way, but in a “lets get all the benefits of marriage that aren’t sexual” kinda way. Why wasn’t that even an option discussed?
I mean, it solves all the problems (financial, shared parenting, someone to do the babysitting etc) that settling will, except sexual gratification. Given that she advocated settling on a man who wasn;t adonis seems to idicate that it isn’t even a poor substitute in that area.
Presumably, a good friend will, by proxy, share many of the characteristics that a shared parent will emotionally, and if she is also gainfully employed, solves the financial dilemnas as well. A friend usually has similar attitudes to many “issues” as well, making them at the bare minimum an adequate match.
IMHO, that this wasn’t even an option discussed, and that settling for an inferior male over a plutonic but ideal female is the recommendation proves that the even though the author has thrown off some of societies rules (single, sperm donor mum is a biggie), ultimately societal norms and sexual pleasure are the most important factors in choosing a mate even for her.
That, to me, is incredibly sad. Rather than solving the main issues that “settling” does in an innovative and I would imagine fulfilling way, and creating a good home life with support and (non-sexual) love, the author struggles along because the only support she can imagine can only be derived from the dregs of less than 50% of the population.
Very sad inded.
Mike, I sort of wondered about why the two women didn’t do as you described but came up with two impediments. First, I think the arrangement would be unstable because each would have to consider that the other would likely use the extra free time created by the arrangement to find a man, leaving the other alone again. Second, entering into such an arrangement would probably be difficult psychologically as it would entail admitting that she had failed in her quest to find a (male) mate (while living alone just means the search has not yet been successful, not that it has failed).
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