A conversation on Facebook has me thinking about the concept of “settling”, and I think part of the problem is that when people say “never settle” or “settle, or you’ll end up alone”, they don’t address what you’re settling about.
(For the sake of argument here, I’m assuming we’re talking about settling in choosing a primary partner.)
Some people are just ridiculous. For instance, Lori Gottlieb, the world’s most fervent pro-settling advocate, suggests that you should overlook your potential spouse’s abysmal sense of aesthetics. I am married to someone with an abysmal sense of aesthetics (sorry, honey, but you liked Batman vs. Superman better than Civil War, and you like neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey), and until this moment it literally did not occur to me that this was something I might have rejected him for. So if you are a person who is going around rejecting people for abysmal aesthetic sense or never having been married before or liking to write about terrorists, I would suggest that maybe you should stop doing that.
On the other hand, it can be conducive to relationship success to have dealbreakers about things that are, objectively speaking, pretty stupid. It’s okay to say “look, this guy chews gum constantly, and it drives me mad.” In general, people don’t change the way you want them to; if he chews gum constantly now, he’s going to chew gum constantly for the rest of time. This is your price of admission for marrying that guy, and if you don’t want to pay it, marry someone else. If the thought of waking up in ten years to the sound of his gum popping makes you want to smash your head into the wall, maybe don’t marry him. (But probably first try explaining the depths of your hatred for gum. Maybe he can kick the habit.)
As well, I think at least for poly people it’s good advice to consider marrying people you don’t have intense romantic passion for. I mean, you’re poly! It’s not like you’re signing up for never experiencing romantic love again in your whole entire life, which I admit would be pretty depressing. There is no particular reason why “makes my heart flutter” needs to be #1 on your list of criteria for the person you’re building a life with. It doesn’t even need to be #20. You can get as many heartflutters as you want from people you aren’t living with, and with whom you don’t have to address such pressing issues as “why are you not doing the damn dishes when I ask?”
(Of course, I took my own advice, and then one day about a year ago I woke up and realized I was in love with my primary. Apparently if you marry someone who’s kind and patient and intelligent and blah blah blah you don’t want to hear about how great my husband is, sometimes you will wind up falling in love with him even if you weren’t at first.)
On the other hand, there are a lot of things you really shouldn’t settle about. Returning to Lori Gottlieb, on her list of people she might potentially consider marrying are both a man who is so boring she prefers reading through dinner to another tedious conversation and a man who gives her a cold shiver down the spine at the thought of embracing him. Now, I can see some situations where the latter might be okay– for instance, if you’re considering a platonic life partnership with someone you don’t intend to have sex with or cuddle. However, in a sexual relationship, not finding sex with your partner actively repulsive is a basic requirement. And I really can’t think of any situation in which finding your partner colossally boring is a good setup. Like, you do realize that when you go through a nasty divorce ten years from now, you’re going to be poorer, older, more miserable, and just as single as you are right now?
Hell, there are things most people should be more picky about. Like messiness, for instance. If you’re going to be living with someone, remember that they’re a roommate, not just a romantic partner; pick someone who has good roommate qualities, not just good romantic partner qualities. While there are other factors (sleep schedules, fondness for loud music, tolerance for guests), a big one is chores. I’m not saying that any division of labor is right or wrong, as long as everyone involved is happy; if you love cleaning and cooking, maybe a messy woman who isn’t entirely sure what coriander is is just the right wife for you. But what I am saying is that a whole lot of relationship conflicts could be avoided if everyone decided to pay attention to “will this person actually do the dishes when they promised?” in addition to “does this person make me feel things in my stomach?”
(People make this a gender thing. It’s not just a gender thing. Plenty of women make shitty-ass roommates.)
But people should be pickier about other issues too. I went through most of my life dating people who were, like, sixtieth or seventieth percentile at dating a borderline person, and now I am dating someone who is ninety-nineth percentile at dating a borderline person. The difference to my functioning and happiness is substantial; I am in much better mental health simply because I’m with him, and there is far less strain on our relationship. In the event my husband gets hit by a car biking home from work, I’m not settling for anything less than the best in the future.
The scary thing about the settling discourse in general and Lori Gottlieb in particular is that they doesn’t seem to understand the difference between the two categories? It’s one thing to say “look, no one is perfect. If the fundamentals are there, the best thing for a happy relationship is to tolerate that she leaves her socks on the floor, has tits bigger than you like, and drinks Red Bull constantly and sometimes smells like it when you kiss her.” It is quite another to say “fuck the fundamentals! Marry someone who bores you to tears! Marry someone whose conflict resolution style is completely incompatible with yours! Marry someone who thinks it’s totally fair that you’re scrubbing the house while they play video games in their underwear! Once you have kids you’re not going to be talking to each other that much anyway!”
Another thing that’s important about the settling discourse, I think, is that small flaws tend to wax and wane in importance depending on how much you genuinely like someone. Constantly leaving your socks on the floor can be anything from an endearing quirk to yet another reason that you ought to divorce this asshole; the difference is not their behavior, but your attitude to it. I’m not suggesting “get a better attitude to your spouse!”; it’s not that simple. Quite often, when you dislike someone, it’s for a really good reason: you fight all the time, the division of labor is unfair, or you just plain don’t like spending time with them.
So in conclusion: settle about stupid shit, but be picky as fuck about important shit. A brief list of important shit:
- liking the person
- wanting to spend time with the person
- being able to resolve conflicts with the person
- shared values
- shared lifestyle and goals
- (if living together) good roommate qualities
- (if having sex) sexual compatibility and attractiveness
- kindness, patience, sense of humor, and all that good stuff
- not possessing any traits that will make you fantasize about murder in ten years
Thing of Things 
But what if I totally do want to hear how great your husband is?
Otherwise great article. 🙂
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I have an article that relates to this coming soon! But I’ve read Gottlieb’s writing before, and I have Thoughts On the Subject:
-I am the child of a fairly pragmatic marriage. It was awful. It was one of those where, when it ended, everyone breathed a deep sigh of relief. There’s pragmatism and there’s pragmatism, but I am irrationally terrified of ending up in a relationship like my parents’.
-Ozy, you are DEAD ON about genuinely liking the person. *insert squeeing about my boyfriend that y’all don’t want to hear*
-As for Ms. Gottlieb herself…. it sounds like what she’s really after is a housemate to help with chores and childcare and the bills. And she mentioned her single-mom friend who was RIGHT THERE. Why can’t they just pool their resources and move in together? They could share chores and childcare, their kids could grow up together, their combined incomes could probably get them a nice house with room for everyone, and both of them could more easily pursue sex and romance with someone else helping out at home. This seems like a VERY OBVIOUS SOLUTION that NOBODY WILL TALK ABOUT.
-She goes on a date she seems grossed out by, but is considering a compromise because he’s “handsome, successful, and smart”? LORI THOSE ARE THE WRONG COMPROMISES. It’s the guy who maybe has a low-earning job or a wonky nose but being around him makes you happy that’s worth a second look! Not the guy you find deeply unpleasant and rude but who won’t embarrass you at Thanksgiving with your judgy cousins! THAT IS THE WRONG AXIS!
-Personally, I believe different things work for different people, but there are two things nobody should ever compromise on in a partner: you have to genuinely enjoy their company, and they have to be kind. The rest, you can figure out as works for you.
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I generally agree with you, but a minor suggestion: maybe some of the benefits of marriage that Gottlieb alludes to are legal ones, which two women couldn’t get in 2008 when the article was written. Still, that doesn’t seem like it should be a major deterrent.
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Both Gottlieb and many wannabe PUAs seem to be on a quest to raise their status by catching the most “objectively high-quality” partner(s) they can manage, with no regard to the quality of their own experience in the relationship.
If you model their goal as “marry / date / fuck someone you can brag about”, their priorities start to make sense. You can show off a handsome/hot partner in public while keeping quiet about how much you hate the relationship. And an “objectively okay” partner you can’t stand is still better than no partner at all (because no partner means failure, of course — your quality*quantity score is zero).
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Assuming you can’t go negative on the quality axis – something I strongly disagree with. There are so many broken/abusive relationships out there that not having one will place you easily within the third quintile.
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See, you’re considering the healthiness of the relationship experience instead of its bragworthiness. “I dated this hot chick and she was totally crazy, man” is a cool story in a way “I was careful to avoid anyone whose personality might be incompatible with mine” is not.
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As someone who recently got out of a relationship much like the first that @Nita described (although I reject the word “crazy”), I can say a few things.
First, I think most of us are pretty risk-averse. Second, I think some of us are the type who, once we get into a relationship, are afraid to leave it, cuz we fear we’ll be alone.
In any case, I suggest that most of us should become more risk tolerant. However, you do not want to get trapped in a broken, dysfunctional relationship, so you need to fucking stop right now anything like the second attitude.
But indeed, with relationships, it’s a good idea to leap-before-you-look. Take the chance. Let it get messy. Date that profoundly beautiful girl who likes you, even if her life is a trainwreck.
IT WILL BE FUN.
…for a while, until it stops being fun. Then it’ll hurt bad as it unravels. You’ll cry a lot. But whatever. A life without tears is a life where you took no chances.
Get in, get out. It’s fun.
We’re all gonna get old and look back on our boring-as-fuck lives, and do you really want to take pride in how cautious and sensible you were?
Blah.
“Everyone dies, not everyone lives.”
I dated a “messy” girl. It crashed and burned. I cried. I have zero regrets.
When it got too hard to deal with, I broke up with her.
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Adding to that, there is the idea of preselection in the literature that states that being seen as the object of desire of high status women makes you more attractive to other women in and of itself. This seems to bear out in animal and human studies, and makes even more sense in this context if the goal is to create a chain reaction wherein one becomes popular by virtue of being seen as being popular.
It’s really dumb, but models reality better than anything else I’ve seen.
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Well, now I have the Cell Block Tango stuck in my head &-)
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Actually, in my small experience with romantic relationships and great experience with roommate relationships, I would say that a lot of the time, profound annoyance with annoying habits develops when I begin to view the habit as an example of a much more pervasive trend in the relationship that I resent. For instance, leaving socks on the floor might go from a trivial problem to a severe one when I begin to see it as an example of how the other person generally doesn’t bother to put the slightest effort to avoiding doing things they know I don’t like.
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Yes, that is what I meant.
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I think some of it may also depend on what matters personally to you.
In my experience, sense of aesthetics as you seem to be using it – not “is this painting/sky pretty” but “what books do you like” is a really good predictor of how compatible I’ll be with someone. So I would absolutely consider liking and not being interested in any of the stuff I do like as a dealbreaker. Partially because common interests are important, partially because… well, experience suggests it usually works.
So I’m not sure your ridiculous example is as ridiculous as all that.
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I’m with you here- similar aesthetic sense is crucially important in my assessment of long-term compatibility… then again, I married an artist and art historian!
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When it comes to a living-together relationship, compatibility with regard to certain types of aesthetics is obviously important. There needs to be at least a mild amount of compatibility of opinions as to how the home should be decorated as well as what type of music will be playing. Also, I think a shared liking for one particular form of art or related activity — say, metal concerts — can really go a long way towards a happy relationship (again, the compatibility need only be mild; metal doesn’t have to be both people’s favorite type of music). Otherwise, I tend to agree with Ozy that most aesthetic differences shouldn’t be deal-breakers.
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The phrase “settling” is terrible, because it implies learning to live with less than what you want because you can’t do any better.
If you find that what you expected you wanted isn’t what you actually want, great.
But anything else… even if your desires are absolutely ludicrous and you can recognize that you would be better off without them, it doesn’t matter. The fact is that those desires, foolish as they are, are yours. And until you personally cease having them, they’re still going to be part of your emotional state.
If seeing your spouse walk past socks on the floor makes you furious, or worse, if you do that incredibly destructive thing where you escalate the issue internally by deciding that your spouse should respect you enough to know that makes you furious and not do it (that’s a dangerous route because of how reversible it is…) you’re going to feel that way no matter how many times you intellectually ruminate on how your spouse is a great husband and father and you need to suck it up about the socks in order to stay with him. The only thing that will help is *actually not caring about the socks anymore,* and you can’t choose to do that based on rumination about his you’d be worse off alone.
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But what if a situation gives you some of the things you want but not all of them? What if you get really annoyed about the sock situation but the happiness you get from the relationship is greater than the annoyance? What if there’s nothing that makes you furious but you’re also missing some things you want, but you’re not sure if those things are even available for you at all?
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I’m about to marry the first and only girl I’ve ever had sex with, or even kissed on the lips, for that matter. And I’m not sure it’s a good idea.
(I apologize in advance for shifting between first and second person here…)
Con: We’ve got a lot of differences and frictions. I’m a gamer and she’s not. I’m a rationalist. She believes in ghosts the way I believe in electrons. She has mental health issues and every so often throws tantrums and demands I move out. She’s even hit you a few times.
Pro: You’ve been with her two years and you’re still much happier than you were without her. None of the problems have actually ended things, and she is finally going to therapy and getting her physical health problems addressed too. I know what I’m getting into and I can handle it.
Con: The thing is, though, there are a lot of people out there that you could be in a relationship with that wouldn’t have these particular problems. And her family is unhealthy; her parents and her older brother all died relatively young. You don’t want her genes in your child.
Pro: I don’t care if I have children or not. And I haven’t actually found anyone else who wants to be in a relationship with me. It doesn’t matter if other people are better than her if I couldn’t have them anyway.
Con: But you agree that, objectively speaking, she’s not a great catch.
Pro: Objectively speaking, neither am I, in a lot of ways. And I’m pretty sure she’s definitely better than nobody. Your depression has been much, much better since you started seeing her.
Con: But “better than nothing” is a very low bar.
Pro: Maybe. I care about her a lot, though, and even if I can find someone better than her for myself, I don’t think she’s going to find anyone else as good for her as I am. Most people aren’t going to be as tolerant; it’ll be a rare person who isn’t a total asshole or loser, will like her in spite of her issues, and doesn’t have immediately better options.
Con: So you’re being a martyr now, sacrificing for her sake? Really, now? Is that a smart thing to do?
Pro: I *do* love her. And that’s a horrible way to put it. It doesn’t *feel* like a sacrifice. And I’d never forgive myself if I up and abandoned her, especially now. She’s a full-time student, at your urging, and you’re giving her money her family doesn’t have so she doesn’t have to both go to school and work. Her brother and parents are all dead, her grandmother is in her nineties, and she has severe chronic back pain. She’d be so much worse off without you it’s not funny.
Con: Some people can’t be fixed. Cut your losses and ge out while you still can. You needed a different life than the one you had with your parents, but is a life with her really the one you want?
Pro: She’s my girl and I’m keeping her. I’m done listening to a selfish bastard.
Con: Well I’m done arguing with an idiot with a martyr complex.
Pro: Goodbye.
Con: Good riddance!
Well, now that my shoulder lawyers have been reduced to calling each other names, does anyone else want to chime in?
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Hmm with such relatively little information (I don’t actually know you), it’s not really appropriate for me to express judgments about the situation. But I will bring up the point that there’s a big difference between marrying someone (which is sort of a lifetime commitment) and refusing to abandon someone at a particular juncture.
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I’d have bailed quite some time ago.
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Like I said, I’m more tolerant and more desperate than most people. 😉
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I’m certainly not qualified to give advice on what’s best for you, but I do firmly believe that your decision should only be based on what’s best for you and entirely ignore the question of what’s best for her. Reasons:
– I do not think you are the only person in the world who can and will help her. If she is single, she will struggle, but she will almost certainly find a way to survive and deal with things.
– Even if that wasn’t true, her life is just not your responsibility.
– Staying in a relationship because of a sense of duty is a recipe for developing a lot of resentment. This is obviously not good for you but it’s also not good for her – you may find yourself lashing out at her for not being a healthier/happier person, “by having emotions you are obligating me to figure out how to fix them, stop putting this burden on me”, and this is not a good situation for anyone
– if part of your support is trying to get her to make better choices (and it sounds like that’s the case), this is also likely to result in resentment from her
It may be that all the difficulties are worth it for you because the benefits of the relationship are so great. If so, you get to make that choice. But I don’t think you should factor in any sort of obligation.
Also, I think since you are uncertain, I would advise not getting married at this time. You can stay in the relationship without making a long-term commitment and revisit the decision later. (Of course you can also divorce later, but if you make long-term commitments there may be more at stake as a result.)
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It is a bad idea to marry people who have hit you. There are a few exceptions: “my partner is autistic and melting down and nonverbal because of it, and my touch was causing them physical pain, and they were incapable of communicating this through words because nonverbal, and afterward they were horrified and took specific steps to make it not happen again”. But if they don’t have an excuse that is at least that good– and especially especially if they hit you because they were angry– it is a bad idea to marry people who hit you. Having been hit in the past very much raises the likelihood that you are in an abusive relationship, and people who are in abusive relationships are notoriously bad at figuring out the costs and benefits of staying.
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It’s kind of weird – if this relationship fits the description of some that are abusive, it never actually *feels* that way. I’ve never been happier and my mom has decided that the relationship has been very good for me. (My mom is also suffering from a degenerative neurological condition that’s affected her judgment, so take that with a few pounds of salt, though.)
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1. What do you mean by “about to marry”? Are you planning to propose? Are you planning the wedding? Are you getting married tomorrow?
2. I second both tcheasdfjkl and Ozy. Putting someone else’s interests first seems kind now, but, in effect, you would be giving her an emotional “loan” she didn’t ask for. That’s not right. And yeah, the yelling and hitting doesn’t sound healthy at all.
3. Personally, I would not marry someone who currently believes in ghosts — they might waste money on things that don’t work, or give kids homeopathic stuff instead of actual medicine. Of course, beliefs change in the long term, but it could go either way.
4. Compromise solution: instead of getting married right now, work on yourself while she works on her education and mental health. She’s expected to graduate in N years, right? In N years (regardless if she’s managed to graduate or not), review the situation. Possible outcomes: a) both of you have improved, and the relationship will be healthier, b) both of you are more prepared to find some else, c) you have helped her out and can consider the marriage question on non-altruistic grounds. (It would be best to give her some sort of heads-up about this plan, so both of you can aim at the same level of commitment.)
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A lifetime ago, I wasn’t far from where you are.
I ended my marriage because the alternative was to drive off a bridge. You only have one life, either be happy with what you have or change it to something you can be happy with.
The hitting, the yelling, and the white knighting/martyrng yourself will not become any more palatable 5 years in.
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I was in a relationship not that far from what you describe. It was dysfunctional in a lot of ways, not physically abusive but it definitely reached the scale of emotionally abusive at times,.The weird intensity and being each other’s support system aspect of your description sounds very familiar. However for some reason (from a subjective perspective, that reason was intense spiritual experience which no one else had ever triggered) it was the only relationship I could ever contemplate being in, and I felt like if I ended it I would never find anyone else.
The relationship did do me a lot of good before I managed to become a level of functional-adult that transcended the dysfunctional relationship, and I couldn’t bear it any more. I ended it, intense spiritual experience or no goddamn intense spiritual experience. It took me a long time before I found someone else but I knew I was better on my own than being part of that.
Don’t get married. If you keep developing and growing you will eventually outgrow this relationship. You’ll need to move on from this at some stage, and you will eventually find something better. You deserve better, even if you don’t believe that right now.
Good luck.
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Maybe it’s stupid, but we’re legally married now. Our wedding, though, is next year. 😉
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I’m so confused by the “settling” conversation. If I had written down my dream partner on paper, he/she would have been nothing like my SO. It turns out that this is because my imagination is deficient and I’m useless at knowing what’s going to make me happy.
He’s so much better than anything I could have dreamed up. And I can’t wish for his “flaws” to be fixed, because that seems like rejecting who he is right now, and rejecting the journey he’s on in his life and it’s deeply disrespectful on some level. Like, if he wants to fix his faults, he’ll fix them. It’s not my job to wish them better. I don’t think I get this concept of settling.
I could give a concrete example I guess: he’s a former addict. To many people his past is a flaw they could never overlook. But it turns out that has given him an encyclopaediac knowledge of, experience with and access to drugs which have directly and hugely benefited my mental health, it has given him massively flexible social skills and an incredible knack for putting other men at ease thanks to the scary fuckers he used to hang out with, and I’m pretty sure it’s made him younger looking and therefore hotter than the vast majority of age-appropriate men. And I don’t get to have that stuff without the “flaw.” I feel like all people’s flaws are like this, part of a tapestry where you can’t pull one thread loose without unraveling the whole thing. So how does the concept of “settling” make sense? Either the whole package is one you want, or it isn’t. I feel like my mental model is missing pieces here. Do people really assess partners like they’re writing about toasters for Which? magazine? That sounds fucking awful.
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It sounds like you have a sense of deep certainty that you want to be with your partner. The “flaw” you mention doesn’t seem like something that actually negatively affects your relationship?
This is not always the case. It is possible to be in a relationship that makes you really happy in some ways and unhappy in others, and not to know whether you should stay or not. Sometimes the situation is “this is clearly better than being single but there are still substantial downsides and there may exist a possible relationship for me which does not have these downsides, but there also may not”.
I don’t think anybody should settle for a suboptimal relationship which is worse than being single. But if it’s pretty good but noticeably imperfect, there can be reasonable uncertainty.
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Thanks, I think that might be the missing piece. I like being alone and spent a long time single before I met him; the relationship started off like “well, every single person I’ve tried dating irritates the ever loving shit out of me after five minutes but somehow this man doesn’t, I guess I should see where this goes?”
And then it spiralled into love from there. “Better than being single” is a very high bar to cross, for me, so I think that’s why this conversation confuses me so much. Thank you for shedding some light!
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If there were a 50% chance of working things out with any given person whom you turned out to seriously date, there would be a 94% chance of ending up with one of your first 4 significant others. And, you know, you’d break even on the chance of ending up with your first love. (Working out is here defined as you don’t break up, one of you just freaking dies eventually.) I’ve been seeking out precise statistics for a while with no dice, but my impression is that the odds, for a first love in particular, are far below fifty-fifty. In my personal life this effect doesn’t even seen time disappear even if both parties had already finished school, which admittedly has a disproportionate effect on whether two people can live together in the long term.
Since the odds of dying in the arms of your first love are so much worse than chance, I feel forced to conclude that the average person has actively misunderstood what type of partner would make them happy. That’s why they choose wrong at first.
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Why should your prior be a 50% probability of working out by chance? Suppose you are only compatible (in terms of lifelong romantic partnership) with 1 in n people, for any value of n. If the probability of dying in the arms of your first love is at least 1/n, then you are not actually doing worse than chance.
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IMHO:
Bad settling: I hate X and Y about my partner, but I’m not likely to do much better, so I’ll think of England or something.
Good settling: I had thought X and Y were deal-breakers, but maybe they’re not. It’s even possible that if I keep looking, I’ll find someone who will make me happier than my partner. But I think he can make me happy enough that I’ll accept X and Y, and I’m going to commit to investing in this relationship, even if a better offer comes around later. Maybe by working on the relationship, my partner will change X or Y in some ways, or maybe I’ll even come to love them the way I love him.
To be glib, #1 is “settling for your partner”, number 2 is “settling down with your partner”
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