The Good Wait vs. Mr. Good Enough

I hate to be the one to liken women to cell phones or cars, but as a six-year veteran of the NYC dating scene, it must be done. All of this came up during a phone call with my mother, who by 22 was married and by 33, had three kids and a house. You see my mother is the proud parent of three children and one grandchild, a former bookkeeper, and is a well educated woman with a masters degree and a great head for business. She spent the latter part of her life as a housewife, with a side gig managing my grandparents’ old businesses and properties. The concept of dating at 31, as normal as she deems it, is not nearly as horrible to her as I know it to be in true life.

She wonders why all the women my age worry about fertility, and I remind her that even if doctors can inject me with all sorts of shit, if I’m nearly barren upon meeting a mate, this process, if one wants their children to have two parents, requires FINDING A MATE. Ohhhh. That’s the sympathy bell going off in her head. I know, it’s hard, she says, but…

This all comes up after I ponder a city change and I learn of a woman my age, 31, getting engaged to her ex-boyfriend after running into him over the holidays. I find it strange at first, but I explain to people that upon reaching a certain age and having spent a certain amount of time in NYC, single, one becomes ambivalent and almost unable to commit to many life paths.

Let me explain. When one arrives here, dreams are bright, brain is open to learning, city appears clean, computer is new. After a few years, the dreams remain, but they are sort of like the candle that is shriveling up—it still burns, but not as bright, and it’s harder to keep it lit. The hunt for the dream job, apartment and man get harder to endure. These things still require the same amount of time, but we are older, have killed more brain cells and now require more sleep.

And in this process, on this path, the dream becomes less sexy and the ultimate settling down, it no longer seems just boring, mediocre and safe; it becomes the rest we all crave. Because sometimes a week vacation doesn’t do it. Sometimes, even two weeks doesn’t do it. And so we press on, for we have friends to drink with, bills to pay, and resumes to keep current, but we really just dream of an easy out.

Sure, one day we may have a grandiose business idea and another day we may think we’d be fine sleeping alone forever. But, the truth is, for those of us that want kids, we know that part of what Lori Gottlieb says in her new book, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, is true. If we remain single and wait it out, like a trooper, like a good independent career girl, we may risk getting pregnant by a baster and that does not come with child support, a weekend off or a free babysitter!

This is where the 50% divorce rate comes in. We were never the gold digger types. Most of us just want the average existence—a purposeful life with a kid or two, a house, and a decent vacation once a year. The car can be small, the house too, and the vacation domestic, but we want comfort and purpose. In America, is that too much to ask?

But these things, these things are harder to attain if you are doing this all alone and that is what you risk if you settle in for the good wait. But if you settle for Mr. Good Enough, the best case scenario is that your marriage and your spouse will age like a good bottle of wine, gracefully. The worst case scenario is that your marriage will age and end, but, when it ends, it will come with child support and a weekend babysitter, AKA your ex-partner. This sounds bad, but honestly, women are far more self sufficient than men, and when you’ve been alone for a while, you begin to realize that sometimes, a husband is just a person you share bills, chores, vacations, possibly children and a home with. You can do all those things alone, but it’d be better to have another income and another person to do them with. Sometimes, he is just another earner, another set of hands, and another driver. How romantic, right? But this is no pity party, it’s the truth, a truth few like to speak. But it’s worth saying because the married folks just make it worse by giving us the pity, via a look, a long sigh, a hmmmm, don’t try so hard. Now, now, match, Jdate and eharmony would not be happy to hear those words of advice!

I have friends that don’t want kids, but they feel the same way. And this is where the cell phone/car analogy comes in. Excuse me for burying the lede, but I needed to add the background first. So let’s say you get this brand new cell phone, and it’s small and shiny and works well and you are excited. You can barely put it down, but over time, the honeymoon wears off. Then, before your contract is up, the carrier gets a new cell phone. It is even sexier, has more options and now you can get more minutes for less money. You decide to pay extra and toss the old one aside. This one is fabulous for a period, until it too pales in comparison to the new multi-function touch smartphone you now covet. The old phones still suit your needs the same way, but they become blah in comparison to the new products. In NYC, the man is the consumer and the women are the cell phones, each beautiful, smart, driven and most independent and far from clingy, but with time, we are each forced into the shadow when a new woman presents herself. So, if you don’t snag the guy when he is young or new to the city, you better keep sending him on a chase, or he’ll fall into another woman’s path. And this is why some of us may settle or leave.

If what you wanted were assets in the form of a house, maybe a modest car and a child or two, husband or not for life, you will have attained these things. And that’s why I suppose woman X married the ex-boyfriend. Because it’s easier. And I can’t blame her. And remember, we were the dreamers, and from job to lifestyle, that included the perfect mate, that is until we realized that perfect mate only exists on the silver screen. And so, condescendingly, we resign to the reality that if we must be like the masses, and settle for a slightly-better-than-average mate to achieve short to medium term goals, a sense of stability in a transient world, we might acquiesce. Call us lame, call us bitter, call us boring, but don’t pity us, because if you haven’t been there, you don’t know.

So, how is the woman that marries at 25 different from the woman that remains single through her 30s, only to marry in time to pop out a few? They are not so different. In fact, it’s likely they’ll end up with similar results. Let’s say one person invests in a bond, slow but steady investing, but they eventually have enough to retire. The next person takes risks with stocks, makes much higher returns in the short and medium term, but a few times in their life suffers major losses from recessions, and because of compounded interest, takes years to get back to where they were. The earlier marrier is the bond investor, if you hadn’t figured out by now, and the equity gal is the single lady.

You see, the younger one marries because she is in love. She sticks it out, cuts her losses and says this guy is enough, so long as the rock is big enough and the wedding is in her hands. No really, she loves him… Anyway, moving on, the older, single one is single because she loved too many times. OK, if you’ve been in love and broke up and survived it, each time you keep telling yourself that why would you have suffered the last breakup if you weren’t waiting for the “right one?” Turns out you were saying Right One, but what you were thinking was Perfect One. Which brings us back to Mr. Good Enough. If the young woman knew that in 10 years, her husband would weigh 15 pounds more, still be sitting on the couch useless, and eventually become just another child, but with a license and a paycheck, she would’ve realized that unless she is one of the 1% or so that get to marry their soulmate, she too married Mr. Good Enough.

Still need an example of why this is not a horrible decision? OK, take Brad Pitt. He had a beautiful, talented, normal wife. She was rich, independent, and hot, but somehow that wasn’t enough, so in between takes on a movie set, he let Angelina Jolie ride the fuck out of him. He was hooked, taken by letting the wrong head make a decision. She’s passionate, global, has many goals, exotic, wants to be Mother Teresa, that is a bisexual Mother Teresa with tattoos, a former drug problem, alleged mental health issues (apparently more serious than the average person!) , and an entourage, but a saint-in-training nonetheless. But, six kids and a horrible goatee-on-crack later, he is probably pining for that normal girl we call Jennifer Aniston. Meanwhile, now she looks like damaged goods because she is divorced, single, 40 and has an intact vagaga. So this leads us to the mess that is idealism and divorce.

Women: lower your, NO not standards, expectations. Men: if you only want something casual, tell us about some baggage you have and we will be sure to only fuck you and dine on your card, no awkward talks, no assumed monogamy. And for the love of god, remember, in NYC, no talk means no monogamy, so strap on a safe–that’s 1964 for condom!