Should You Marry Him? - 2/12/08

[Smartmarriages]

Responses to Marry Him still coming in.  More than one women's
discussion/book group has decided to discuss the article in their next
meeting.  I look forward to reports - be sure to include demographics: age,
marital/engagement status.  And, here's Maggie Gallagher's Valentine's Day
column.  - d


Should You Marry Him?
Maggie Gallagher 

St  Valentine was a Christian physician martyred by the Romans on Feb. 14,
270 A.D.  In 496, Pope Gelasius I declared Feb. 14 St. Valentine¹s feast
day. 
 
This happened to fall one day before the ancient Roman libidinal feast of
Lupercalia, in which Romans dropped urgent love messages in urns to
unmarried girls. 
 
Women have been confused by Valentine¹s Day ever since.

If ³sexual value² equals roughly the number of people who want to sleep with
you, minus the number of people you¹d be willing to sleep with, the sexual
value of the typical American 18 year old male is about negative 346.  He
has nowhere to go but up.
 
That the sexual value of men rises and that of women falls with age in a
kind of inexorable  natural egalitarian process, is a truth that each
generation--apparently alas!-- must discover for itself anew and only after
its too late.  

Or so one would conclude from reading Lori Gottlieb¹s paean to late-life
sexual realism in the Atlantic Monthly, ³Marry Him: The Case for Settling
for Mr. Good Enough.²

At  40, Lori embarked on the archetypical American story of female
empowerment: tired of waiting for ³The One,² she had a baby on her own by
artificial insemination.  You go girl!
 
In a brutally honest self-examination of what she has learned as a result
that anyone who has ever been a college-educated upwardly mobile unwed
mother (a small club, I know but one to which I happen to belong) will
recognize, Lori reflects in the difference between fantasy and reality,
especially the fantasy of having it all ³a baby now, my soul mate later!²

³Well. . .ha!  Hahahaha. And ha,² she says.

What all those single mom by choice books don¹t tell you is ³once you have
a baby alone, not only do you age 10 years in the first 10 months, but if
you don¹t have time to shower, eat, urinate in a timely manner. . .there¹s
very little chance that a man‹much less The One‹is going to knock on your
door and join that party.²
  
It¹s not just women with husbands that can incite envy.  To unwed mothers,
even ex-husbands seem a miraculous‹what? Every other Saturday off and a
child support check?

So Lori has some advice for the next generation of 30 year olds: If you want
a family, find a nice guy, and settle : ³Marriage isn¹t a passion-fest, it¹s
more like a partnership formed to run a very small mundane, and often
boring nonprofit business.  And I mean this in a good way.²
 
Anyone who has ever stayed married will have some sympathy, at least some of
the time, for that point of view.  But in the end Lori, who has got her
fingers on a big chunk of truth, has missed the most important point.  Women
shouldn¹t settle for less, we should appreciate more.  A good family man is
not a step down, it¹s a step up.
 
Find a good man and love him. Do it not only because it¹s the best way to
raise a family.  Do it because spending your life actually loving a man,
however imperfectly, is better than spending your time perpetually shopping
for the right set of inner sensations in your brain (aka  waiting for ³the
One.²).  Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly.

Lori¹s married friends often tell her she¹s lucky, she doesn¹t have to deal
with these impossible husbands. ³Each time, I say ŒO.K., if you¹re so
unhappy, and I¹m so lucky, leave your husband! In fact, send him over
here!²   

Not one wife has taken her up on her offer, yet.

So to all those good American family men with disappointed wives out there:
Happy Valentine¹s day.  You deserve it.


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