Don't Settle, or, There's Enough Happiness To Go Around

Today, a friend of mine dug up a three-and-a-half-year-old piece from the Atlantic called "Marry Him!: The Case for Mr. Good Enough." I have a vague recollection of there being some kind of stir around it back in 2008, but in the early part of 2008 I was heavily pregnant and also completely in love, so I wasn't really paying much attention to tomes with dating or marriage advice.

Today, a single mama with a case of the lonelies, I read through the whole thing. Actually, I've read through the whole thing three times now (my boss really loves me today, guys) because the first time was full of so much emotional reaction that I had to read it a second time to get a rational read on it, and the second time was so full of incredulity at the terrible analytic capacity and also the extreme sense of over-privilege on display that I had to read it a third time to make sure I wasn't emotionally over-reacting again.

It's HORRIFYING. Really, truly horrifying.

The basic premise of the piece is that if you're looking to create a stable family unit, you don't need grand passion in your choice of partner. And on its face, that's a true and valid statement. A stable family unit is not the primary goal of most people out there looking for a life partner, though. The author takes issue with this fact, reflecting on her own dating experiences and those of her friends, and finally coming to the conclusion that a stable family unit is the goal that everyone OUGHT to have. Those that have made the trade off of passion for stability and complain about it now are lucky to have made the choices they did, and the author can't believe that it took her own self so long to figure out what she ought to want.

And that's where everything she says just breaks down and becomes the kind of drivel that I hate to read but can't stop myself from compulsively looking at.

Moral prescriptives about what people ought to want are always fraught with logical inconsistencies and mental acrobatics. Ms. Gottlieb is no exception. She starts with the realization that she's not happy. She then constructs an argument for why she'd be happier if she'd made other choices earlier in her life. The whole thing is the study of an acute case of Frost syndrome, in which "the road less traveled" is held up as some sort of saving grace.

But some of the ways in which she attempts to justify her position are interesting to me, a single mother in my 20s (rather than my 40s) who is also single, and also gets powerful lonely on occasion. The subtext of many of the most offensive statements in the piece make it clear that I am not the target audience for this piece. And I can't help but feel that perhaps if I could infuse some of my own perspective into Ms. Gottlieb's thought processes, I might be able to help her out a bit.

For starters, what is a stable family unit? Why is a stable family unit irrevocably and for all time a man, a woman, and two point three children living in a house with a white picket fence and a rose garden and a dog? On paper, I'm a single mother, but I live in a house with my parents (both my biological parents, in their 25th year of marriage), my biological child (concieved in a foreign country and born out of wedlock and with no legal father) and the two adult children of my oldest sister, who is actually my half sister (the product of my father's first marriage). No dog, no white picket fence. We're pretty stable, despite the tensions that sometimes erupt. I would even go so far as to call us a stable family unit. And my daughter certainly gets the advantage of all that stability and also all that attention.

The idea that two married, hetero-sexual people raising a child is the only thing that qualifies as a stable family unit is tied to the statistics about the children of single parents (specifically single mothers) that exist out there, and I'll be the first to admit that such statistics sound dismal. But I have always questioned those statistics, and not just because statistics can be manipulated to show just about anything. No, I've never been fully convinced that the relationship between single-parent households and under performance at school or behavior problems wasn't completely spurious. Because here's a little secret: most single-parent households are also POOR.

Yeah, shocking, I know. But true. And poverty carries it with a whole host of issues that might affect things like school performance and behavior a whole lot more than not having a daddy. Like, hunger. It's really hard to concentrate when you're hungry. Also, malnutrition in infants can and does lead to diminished mental capacity, period. And I've never seen a study that controlled completely for the variables that come with poverty when trumpeting the ills of single parenthood.

I'm pretty sure Ms. Gottlieb doesn't have to worry about poverty. So I think she can probably settle down a little on the desire to find a husband so that she can create a stable family unit. I'm pretty sure she can do that just fine on her own. Isn't that empowering?

But I don't really think that this woman wants to find a husband so desperately so that she can create a stable family unit. I think she's lonely.

And hey, I have a lot of sympathy for that condition. I suffer from it myself.

But here's what I don't get: she also acknowledges that most of her married friends are ALSO LONELY. SO, she's single and lonely, and her married friends are married and lonely, and it's better to be married and lonely because it's easier to manage kids when you've got a partner to help you out.

SO, a stable family unit is not actually one that's best for the kids, it's the one that minimizes stress on the parents. And sure, as someone that has a lot of help with her daughter in the form of the very non-traditional stable family unit I enjoy, I'll be the first to say that help with kids is a godsend. But again I say unto you: Help with kids doesn't come only in the form of a husband that watches them while you eat lunch and takes the trash out. (Seriously, these are her desired traits in a mate.) You've got lots of single parent friends, you imply. Why don't you all get together and crowd-source the kid watching while you go on dates and have lives?

Because the thing this woman says that offends me the most is this: "With my nonworking life consumed by thoughts of potty training and playdates, I’ve become a far less interesting person than the one who went on hiking adventures and performed at comedy clubs."

Why don't you still do some of those things? You can. I promise.

You don't give up your life to have a child. You don't have to, and the kid will be a better person for you being an interesting, complete, well-rounded person than they will by you being a slave to them. They will be a better person even if they spend a weekend at "Auntie Em's" house now and again, or spend a week with Grandma while you go to Colombia. Really, I promise. It's not child abuse to get away from your kid now and again.

The rest of Gottlieb's dating advice, and exhortations to settle, spring from a complete misunderstanding of the difference between "lust" and "romance." Yeah, that biker that runs guns in his spare time probably gets your motor running in a way that the mild-mannered accountant with allergies to everything under the sun doesn't. But your choice is not dichotomous. Life is not black and white. And the lust you feel for the biker is not "romance." It's ADRENALINE.

Romance comes in a whole host of unexpected packages. For that matter, lust comes in a whole host of unexpected packages. And while you may not fall in love with everyone you fall in lust with, to go from that to the idea that you don't need any sexual attraction to your partner is a leap of logic that I can't even really quite follow. Yes, it's a cliche that long-married people don't have a lot of sex, but to turn that into the support for the argument that marrying someone you never want to have sex with is a good idea is just a little... off. To put it mildly.

So Gottlieb takes her own loneliness, her own frustrations with her (self-chosen, I must say) single parenthood, and turns that into a prescriptive for women everywhere. Marry a man so you don't do what I did? Settle for a man that's good enough so you don't choose to go to a sperm bank so you can have kids? Settle for Mr. Right Now so that you can be lonely with someone later on? I don't really get it.

Here's a better idea: be happy. Stop comparing your life to the lives of your friends and appreciate your life for what it is. Has it ever occured to you that you and everyone you know are unhappy because you're all desperately trying to impress each other instead of enjoying yourselves? Stop competing for happiness, because happiness isn't a pie that the world will run out of. There is more than enough happiness for everyone, more and much more than enough to go around, and you can be happy and they can be happy and I can be happy and we can all be happy. Even if we're lonely sometimes, even if it's hard sometimes, we can be happy. And if we took the road less traveled, there would still be dark places and you, Ms. Gottlieb, would have written a piece called, "Don't Marry Him!: The Case For Holding Out For Mr. Right."

Some people are never happy, and I'm sorry for that. But playing to the insecurities of single women, and exhorting young women to "settle" simply to avoid a fate that in your case actually looks pretty rosy from where I sit, is a pretty awful thing to do. Your life is wonderful. Deal with it.

I Am A Girl Who Reads

Last year, as I was in the midst of realizing that the boy I was dating had a girlfriend and was a malignant narcissist, I discovered Thought Catalog.

I discovered it because there was a post that started making the rounds of social media. It was called You Should Date An Illiterate Girl, and it made me cry. I sat at my desk with tears dripping down my cheeks, my throat so tight I couldn't breathe, holding on to that knot desperately so that I didn't sob, so that my cries remained inside and only silent tracks of saltwater tracked down my face and over my chin and onto my neck and over the knot in my throat.

It made me cry because I saw myself as the illiterate girl. I saw myself as the settler and the one settled for, as the woman that would die with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of my capacity to love.

I shared it, of course, as I am wont to do.

And later, when the boy and I communicated for the first time since my sharing, he saluted me, "Hello, girl who reads."

I was confused.

I've been thinking about that piece lately, so I read it again.

And you know what? He was right. I am the Girl Who Reads. I can differentiate between the soullessness of someone that cannot love and the desperation of someone who loves too much. I can read the lie in the hesitation of the breath. I know the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and a lifetime's worth of bitter cynicism. I have said goodbye so many times I am comfortable with it. I can close a book and look at it with only a little longing, I can go back and reread the same words with nostalgia but not regret that the story doesn't change.

I do insist that my narratives be rich, that my supporting cast be colorful, that my typeface be bold. I demand these things because life is short and without good stories and good friends and beauty it is also boring. I will not be bored. I will not live a life unfulfilled.

And I'm sure that's why he couldn't love me. And I'm sure that's why I couldn't actually love him, despite all my best efforts.

I will tell my stories. I will read and read and read until I understand and then I will tell my stories. And my narratives will be rich and my characters will be colorful because that has been my life. I will live the stories I want to tell.

And it would be nice, at the end, when I am an old woman and I am fading into the dark of my own denouement,  if someone was there to hold my hand and stroke my brow and whisper that our life was good. But I won't sacrifice my stories to have that person.

I am a girl who reads. I have words. I have rhythms and cadence and connotation. I can feel love and truth in my skin and I want nothing more than to absorb beauty into my bones. And if you can really understand that, then you won't fail me. If you can really live with knowing that my stories come first and everything else comes second, you're not too weak to love me.

Family Weddings Are Giant Cliches.

So. It's a cliche, right? Hooking up with someone at a wedding. It's totally a cliche.

And I didn't do it. But the only reason I didn't do it is because it's a cliche. So it would be nice of everyone to tell me that it is a cliche, so that I don't feel like I threw away a perfectly decent chance to have really drunken sex for no good reason whatsoever.

I should start at the beginning. Not the middle. In media res, people. I am an ARTIST.

Family weddings are always a delicate situation. There's always a sense of wait, who are you again? And what that particular question ALWAYS means at a family wedding is "Who do you share DNA with? So I can know if I share DNA with you." This is particularly true in large families, that don't see each other often, that take extended family very seriously. I mean, the families of people that married into my father's family are regularly included at family gatherings. When my father's mother's family has reunions, there's a softball game: the Tschinkle's versus the "Out-laws." Everyone with Tschinkle blood is on one team. Everyone without is on the other.

No, seriously.

Anyway. There's this guy that is in much the same position that I am in when it comes to family: his siblings and cousins are all somewhere between 15 and 25 years older than he is because he's the product of a second marriage. Just like me. We're actually the same age. At one of these massive weddings back in the day when we were something like three and four, we were made to dance together. He was wearing a tiny tuxedo, I had flowers in my hair, it was a thing. There is a picture. It is famous. Everyone and their mama has a copy of it. And I mean that pretty literally, in this case. I have a copy, my mother has a copy, my grandmother has a copy, his mother has a copy, his brother's wives have copies, my aunt has a copy, and on and on.

FOR THE RECORD here, we aren't related. We worked shit out.

But he grew up pretty darn foxy, if you ask me. He's got a nice beard thing going on, likes skinny suits, is sort of nerdy with his cell phone tower job stuff. And really, really gorgeous hazel green eyes with that super Italian round-almond shape and incredibly great eyelashes. Holy shit, the eyes.

So we're at this wedding that includes a solid three days worth of events, and we're talking and laughing and drinking with both our generation (who are now all in their forties) and the older kids from the generation below us (who start at about 24 and range downward). Everyone's always in high spirits because, hey, it's a wedding. Also we haven't had a big family wedding in AGES. Also, this is the last of Uncle Dan's boys, so we won't have another one until the older kids start getting hitched.

And this guy and I, we're laughing and drinking and doing it up all right with everyone else, but we're also sort of scoping each other. I mean, he's cute. I look good in a dress. He's the right height for me in heels and we're both a little more awkward and a little shyer than most of the rest of the family. It works.

AND EVERYONE IS SUDDENLY TEASING US ABOUT THE PICTURE WHEN WE WERE TODDLERS.

Then we get to the actual wedding reception. Last night. It's a black tie affair. There are tuxes and evening gowns and a cocktail hour that goes on for two hours and more champagne toasts than you can shake a stick at. But when it comes to seating arrangements, they have put this guy and I together at a table with a bunch of the rest of our generation. Meaning, a bunch of 40-somethings. We are the only two under 30s at this table. Also the only two single people at this table. And OF COURSE my cousin Craig makes sure to ask me if I am actually single as we're sitting down to dinner. You know, in case I had a boyfriend stashed away in Wisconsin that just didn't come with me. And then makes sure to point out to me that the foxy guy that's not my cousin, but my cousins' childhood friend's younger brother is also single.

We roll our eyes at each other.

Dinner, a whole goddamn lot of merlot and cheap beer later, and we're dancing. There are no slow dances at this wedding reception. We do not recreate the sweet picture from our youth.

We end up in the hotel bar with a collection of other partiers after the reception. We proceed to drink more. We chat together. Ignoring everyone else. I tell myself to stop flirting. It does not work.

I could flow through the rest of the night, but it ends like this: we're kissing in his empty hotel room. He pulls back and tells me that there are at least 20 pairs of eyes on us at this moment. I tell him that's ridiculous because EVERYONE ELSE IS ASLEEP. (They totally are, for the record. Asleep or passed out in drunken stupors. Same thing.)

He says it's still weird. It's now like 3 in the morning and I tell him that I can always leave and he kind of stands there like a deer in the headlights and so I just kind of kiss him on the cheek and book it out of his room and into my own bed.

But what I realized standing there, after kissing him for five minutes or so, is (one) that he was WASTED and (two) that the whole thing was just so cliche. I mean, I hadn't seen it because I was genuinely interested in him for his beard and his eyes and his awkwardness and his mixed up Long Island/South Florida accent and his nerdiness about cell phone towers.

But I'm pretty sure he was just all like: "It's a wedding. People hook up at weddings. She's my age and she looks nice in a dress. Good enough."

So, probably walking away was a great decision. I mean, for my heart and all, given how fucked up I already am.

But then I think that I haven't gotten laid in what seems like FOREVER and I think to myself, "You've got stop not being willing to settle a little bit for a simple one-night stand, Ryan. Not everything must or even should be grand passion."

Because getting laid would be really nice. Serious.