Marry him

In the Atlantic, Lori Gottlieb makes a lengthy but very readable case for women settling rather than holding out for a soul mate who may never come. The piece makes for a powerful rejoinder to India Knight’s column last month regretting that more women don’t walk out on their husbands. At the time, I suggested in response to Knight that people who find their marriages disappointing will probably be more not less miserable if they end them, and I think Gottlieb’s piece – written by a single woman in her forties now desperate to settle – supports that conclusion.

I used to listen each week to a litany of unrelenting complaints about people’s husbands and feel pretty good about my decision to hold out for the right guy, only to realize that these women wouldn’t trade places with me for a second, no matter how dull their marriages might be or how desperately they might long for a different husband. They, like me, would rather feel alone in a marriage than actually be alone, because they, like me, realize that marriage ultimately isn’t about cosmic connection—it’s about how having a teammate, even if he’s not the love of your life, is better than not having one at all.

Read the whole thing.