Suddenly finding herself forty and single, Lori Gottlieb said the unthinkable in her March 2008 article in The Atlantic: Maybe she and single women everywhere, needed to stop chasing the elusive Prince Charming and instead go for Mr. Good Enough.
Her ideas created a firestorm of controversy from outlets like theToday show to The Washington Post, which wrote, "Given the perennial shortage of perfect men, Gottlieb's probably got a point," to Newsweek and NPR.
UPDATE: I'm changing my rating of this book. I would like to give it two and a half stars, but since I can't I'm rounding down instead of up. While I thought it was very interesting I've now had a good week under my belt since finishing it. I can only say that while this book has many valid points that should be thought about (see below), it is SO incredibly discouraging and I think that actually might be more dangerous than helpful. I can't stop thinking about this book, and not in a good way. It is more like the boogy man that hides under your bed than the Jiminey Cricket who reminds you what the right thing to do is. Although I realize that this woman has not been happy with her experience, and I appreciate her sharing (we can all learn from each other), this work has a way of making you feel like this will happen to you if you don't heed her advice and settle. It's kind of like someone who lost a loved one in a car accident and writes a compelling story, with valid and statistically proven data, that we should all stay out of cars because there is a highly likely chance that you will be in a car crash. The danger there is that all signs point to that being a great possibility for those of us who spend any significant amount of time in cars, and BECAUSE there is truth to it, it can paralyze someone from going in a car again -- to their actual detriment. Using cars is much needed in millions of people's lives and there are significant numbers of people who benefit from cars more than they are ever hurt by them... in the same way many people benefit by waiting to get married (significant statistics stating that marrying over 30 and taking care in your choice of mate dramatically reduces divorce rates). I'm almost a little bit sorry that I read this book and apologize to my good friends who have had to listen to me!
Lori Gottlieb set out to not only find herself true love, but to understand why so many great women are single and not finding husbands. What she finds is that possibly it's more about us (women) than about them (men). Women are considered, on average, considerably more picky than men. Why are we like this? Gottlieb suggests that empowerment became mixed up with entitlement. That women (and men, but mostly women) want the entire package and expect their mate to be more to them than is often possible. Is this a bad thing? Well, it's detrimental according to Gottlieb. Can you blame us? Who knows, that's up for discussion. After centuries of being told who we would marry and being treated like livestock rather than humans you can't blame a woman for wanting something more. The question is, how much is too much to want?
According to marriage historians, comfort and stability used to be thought of as good things, but since women don't actually require the institution of marriage anymore (we can financially support ourselves, have babies without relationships, protect ourselves through various means, etc.) we redefined what was needed in a marriage (see my review of Committed for more on this subject). What we look for now in marriage is for it to make us happy. The main problem is our definition of happy has changed considerably from generations past. Instead of being content, Gottlieb argues that we want to be sublimely happy all (or almost all) of the time, and if we're not we consider ourselves unhappy -- instead of content. On top of that, even if we are content, we often don't deem that as enough to sustain a relationship. This topic is explored more within the text and is definitely something worth thinking about, not just in relationships but in our lives in general in modern times. In modern society, we are told that we are to be very happy most of the time or there is something wrong. Perhaps what's wrong is that the expectation to be happy all of the time is impossible.
Along with portraying our desire to be happy, this books contains interesting information about the way that women select men (we like the ones who will make us happy, there's that h-word again). She goes on to give a great and interesting explanation of the "high" effect that women look for in relationships... the "butterflies" that we crave at the beginning. I must say that although I enjoyed Justin Long's version of why women love drama in "He's Just Not That Into You", this one is better. It is explained in more detail and makes (frighteningly) more sense. Unfortunately. We want our soulmates, and we want the feeling that we experience when we are with them to be electric. Gottlieb's argument is that "choosing someone who is good enough... 'is a reasonable and practical strategy for having a happy life over the long run.'"A Rabbi that she speaks with concludes that looking for our soulmate is a dangerous way to go. Many of the experts (and non-experts) in this book believe that you grow into being soulmates.
So what is the solution? What should we be looking for, and how do we get ourselves out of this rut that so many women find themselves in? I won't tell you here. You honestly need to read the book to glean the information in context. That, or we would need to have a detailed conversation, which we obviously can't do here. I will tell you, however three things that I think fit across the board, apply to everyone, and mean the same thing out of context as they do in it...
Love should increase over time, not start at a high.
Recognize the difference between your wants and your needs.
Look for chemistry that's a six or a seven and compatibility that's a nine instead of the other way around.
The beauty of the book is that Gottlieb is unapologetically real. The obnoxious truth is that even in the modern year of 2010 "...if (men) spend six months or a year in a go-nowhere relationship, they don't lose value in the dating market the way women in her thirties do. If anything, men become more valuable in their thirties, and if they start to lose value around age 50, they can still meet and marry someone ten years younger and start a family together. As any economist will tell you, it's all about supply and demand. The longer you hold out, the more the supply of available men goes down at the same time that their demand goes up and a woman's marital value goes down. The result, for women, is like a really bad dating recession." So don't walk away from the pretty-great but not superb guy thinking he's never going to find someone to replace you. He will, annoyingly so, find someone. In fact, Gottlieb and her experts tell us that most men who want to marry will eventually get married (this is not always the case with women). Gottlieb's answer to that is that we too can find someone, we just need to make our expectations more reasonable.
LET ME WARN YOU NOW: This is a hard book to read at thirty, I imagine it is grossly harder to read if you are even older. I could only read this book in small chunks before I wanted to punch myself in the face. Literally. I took LOTS of breaks so that wouldn't happen. However, the book is certainly eye-opening. It's a way to make yourself more self-aware and, as the author states, she's not trying to make us feel crummy but rather show us that "self-awareness leads us to make better decisions. It puts you in a better place to get what you want." Gottlieb calls her book a "dating public service announcement" and she tells us it's about teaching the reader "how to value what's truly valuable." I think her candor and exploration of the behavior of people in our time and country is fascinating. Not only for single women; people who are curious about why we choose what we do, how we rate happiness in this day and age, and what our choices ultimately say about us will also find this engaging.
Four Coconuts
xo,
The Coconut Librarian
Disclaimer: I rated this book four coconuts because it was thought-provoking and entertaining. I cannot vouch for Gottlieb's validity in statistics, experts, or claims because I have not done any research regarding these matters. I read this book for fun and not for scientific purposes. I do not, however, recommend this book if you are already particularly upset about being single and/or close to or older than 40 and single. She does not offer much comfort nor advice to women after a certain age, and I imagine it would be more depressing than interesting at that point.
(description at the beginning in italics is taken from publicity for the book)
Recent Comments