Settle for less in love

By Laurie Gottlieb
Click here to read the whole Sunday Times article.

"To the outside world, we still call ourselves feminists, and insist that we are independent, self-sufficient and don’t believe that damsel-in-distress stuff. In reality, however, we are women who want a traditional family. And, despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra of getting married young was finally replaced by pursuit of high ideals (education, career, but also true love), every woman I know – no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure – feels panic if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.

Whether you acknowledge it or not, there is good reason to worry. By the time 35th-birthday brunch celebrations roll around for still-single women, serious, irreversible life issues masquerading as “jokes” creep into public conversation: “Well, I don’t feel old, but my eggs sure do”; “I’m not getting any younger”. The birthday girl smiles a bit too widely as she delivers these lines, and everyone laughs a little too hard for a little too long because, at their core, they pose one of the most complicated, painful and pervasive dilemmas with which many single women are forced to grapple nowadays: is it better to be alone or to settle?

"My advice is this: settle. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t rule out a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in the cinema. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. If you want the infrastructure in place for a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, because many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.

"Back when I was still convinced I’d find my soul mate, many of the guys I dated lived up to my requirements – but, if one of them lacked kindness, another didn’t seem emotionally stable enough, and another’s values clashed with mine. Others were sweet, but so boring that I preferred to read during dinner.

Now I realise that, if I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life, I’m at the age where I will probably need to settle for someone who is settling for me. What we forget is that we won’t always have the same appeal that we may have had in our twenties and early thirties. Having turned 40, I now have wrinkles, bags under my eyes and hair in places I didn’t know hair could grow on women. With my nonworking life consumed by thoughts of potty training and play dates, I have become a far less interesting person than the one who went on hiking adventures and performed at comedy clubs."