Does anyone really settle?

Hey, when do you start your blog again? Coz I just read an article that said guys are into settling now. You should talk about that.

Aaah the myth of settling. Is it settling when the middle-aged cat lady realizes that she probably won’t be doing much better than Selena Gomez guy and he acknowledges the same? Or, is it more a conscious recognition of where they stand on the desirability scale and giving up on trying to punch above their weight class? 

I read the article to which you’re referring and I personally found it to be encouraging in many ways. The only thing I take issue with is the author referring to this phenomenon as “settling”. (That’s right, this is a post devoted to an argument of semantics. Those are always the most enjoyable to read, right? No? Well, good to see I’m picking up exactly where I left off).

Finding a person that you are “friends with, have fun with, and have great sex with” and choosing to build a life with that person does not sound like settling. The concept that it is so is a reflection of our culture’s obsession with the great love affairs of literature and screen. It’s a common belief that this Nicholas Sparks/Jane Austen-type indoctrination only hurts women. But I can tell you from personal experience with the men I’ve dated and as well as the experiences of my male friends that this delusion affects men as well. I’ll try to explain this the way I calm my mom down when she hears about Craigslist killers and human heads found on Hollywood hiking trails. It wouldn’t be notable if it happened often. If people being beheaded and children being kidnapped were commonplace, no one would hear about it. It is because it is unusual that it is compelling and thus considered newsworthy. The same can be said about the type of love detailed in movies, television shows, and great novels (for the record I’m referring to Austen here, not Sparks. I’m not a total Philistine. *Discreetly deletes the Ghost Whisperer episodes from the DVR*).

“The Vow” was based on a real-life couple. A man wouldn’t quit on his wife after a life-altering accident despite the fact that they’d only been married a short time and also in spite of the fact that the accident left her, not only with amnesia, but also with a completely different personality. Why is that a story worth sharing? Because, statistically speaking, divorce rates increase when one of the two partners develops a disease, certain types of cancer for example, as do rates of infidelity. I’d like to think that I would never be that much of a soulless bastard and I’m sure you feel the same way. However, despite good intentions of those not in the situation (and despite the fact that society as a whole will pretty much have to acknowledge that you are a steaming pile of dog shit for leaving or cheating on someone you profess to love when they need you most) a shockingly high number of people will Gingrich you or at least Edwards out if you get sick. At the very least they’ll want to, or save face by doing it after you’re better. Before you kill yourselves, just remember that in today’s culture, the majority of people are awful. Consider the fact that Kim Kardashian has 13,348,471 twitter followers (that’s roughly 7 percent of twitter users and amounts to a number equal to 4 percent of the US population) and that urine-soaked media whore is the physical embodiment of the social and intellectual holocaust that is hastening our eventual downfall.

[It should also be noted that this has happened, that Chris Brown has 8,281,842 twitter followers and that, at the time this article was written, Rick Santorum was the Republican front-runner for POTUS…*Paging Odoacer*]

But if you are in the minority, one of the decent remainders, your search would be focused on someone like-minded. So if you get rage strokes when you remember that Justin Bieber drives a Ferrari F430, or how Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission turned out, remember that, despite the fact that the vast majority of Americans don’t know about the latter because they’re too obsessed with the former, you can find one or two girls who do. And they’re probably not awful looking! I have to believe that the small pocket of decent human beings left leave me with enough options for mates that I needn’t worry about dying alone while cradling a dog dressed in a sailor suit.

[Though I’m inching ever closer…]

Provided I pick one of the three or four people that I could foresee successfully breeding with, is it really “settling” just because I don’t lie awake at night unable to think of anyone or anything else?

For most of us, our first experience of love is the Hollywood-style experience. A superficial obsession with someone who likely isn’t a good match but to whom we feel an intense, unrelenting, fiery passion that sucks us in. When the relationship ends (and most often it does) we are decimated (I didn’t date for two years). But those relationships are built largely on hormones, fantasy, and the excitement of finding someone who likes us as much as we like them. They are impulsive, superficial, and as such, short-lived. There are of course exceptions, but the vast majority of the time they end in a manner opposite that of the big screen. In the movie “The Notebook”, for example, the female protagonist deserts her safe, cerebral choice in love (who btw is gorgeous and honestly in love with her) for the other-side-of-the-tracks man who lights her fire. It works out well for them and even gets the blessing of her mother who initially was reticent. There is a scene in which the mother takes her rebellious seed to a construction site (or steel mill, or something that my failure to remember in specifics makes me seem like a Limbaughian parody of a liberal douche) and she tells her daughter that, if she could do it all again, she would marry the working class guy her parents hated. Fair enough…in retrospect…without any realistic basis for comparison. I would have to agree with the disapproving parents. Before you chastise me, let me assure you, it’s not a matter of financial instability. To suggest so is a gross oversimplification and is a suggestion by a lazy writer to create a black and white issue from shades of grey. The issue at hand, realistically, is how long a relationship can flourish between two people from entirely different backgrounds, with different educations levels, different upbringings, different ideals, goals, passions, interests, etc.

Beyond that, in this particular case, age is a factor. Most of the girls I know who married their first loves, their “great love(s)” are woefully unhappy. Imagine being in your mid-to-late twenties, saddled with multiple children, struggling financially (because, regardless of familial wealth or education you began popping out children before you could reasonably support them), and dealing with a mate who has entirely different interests, with whom you can barely carry on a conversation beyond the mundane details of your day and the needs of your kids. Falling in love is great, but there is something to be said for interjecting some thought into the process. We don’t live in a fantasy world and while the wealthy mom, who married later in life the man that her family and friends felt was a good fit, with the two healthy children and the devoted husband may, in her boredom, foster Loman-esque fantasies about how the source of her unhappiness is the lost love and how her life would be so much happier if she had just followed her heart may make for a more compelling story, the brutal reality is that this woman has absolutely no basis to make such a claim and, more times than not, those relationships end up in misery or divorce.* The fact is, in reality life-long relationships are HARD. They require work from both sides and, with all do respect to Mr. McCartney and Mr. Lennon, love is not, in fact, all you need.

[Nothing lessens the negative impact of a horrible life decision like another horrible life decision]

We live in an increasingly stupid, immature, impulsive, selfish, narcissistic culture that is making actually committing to a lifetime with another individual a borderline insurmountable task. I grew up in a loving home with tremendous parents who had an ideal marriage devoid of fights despite a desire to spend a nauseatingly large amount of time together and yet, I waver on whether or not marriage is something I actually want for myself. The guy I was engaged to in my late teens/early twenties was a very good man. He loved me and he stood by me through some very challenging times in my life. I wish him all the happiness in the world, but do I wish we had gone through with the marriage? HELL NO. He’s a sweet kid, but he was not terribly intelligent, he rarely made me laugh, he had no drive or direction in life (quit his job to become a line cook and start a folk band…two months after I bought him his first guitar), he dressed like a pedophile from the 70s, and he referred to my breasts as “boobies”. I don't mean to sound cruel or disparage him and I would never want to speak ill of someone who had such a profound positive influence on my life, but listing the good aspects of the relationship isn't the point. No matter how very deeply I loved him, how much of me still loves him on some level, I physically shudder at the thought of being tethered to him right now. We had absolutely nothing in common besides a love of Star Wars and a few mutual friends and it is painfully obvious now that there was no real future there. As I said, he is an incredibly sweet, strong person and he will make someone very very happy one day. But that person is not me and if that relationship hadn't ended when it did, I’d be miserable now.

[Alright, maybe I'm becoming a *little* cynical...]

The truth is, that for the majority of people, that spark – that all-consuming enthrall – is not sustainable. It either fades over time into a comfortable friendship with sex or it burns out. Hard. So rejecting someone on the basis of a lack of spark is nothing more, in my opinion, than a convenient excuse for those who aren’t yet ready for a commitment (even if they or others have convinced them otherwise). If I do decide that marriage and children is something that I want in the future, I have absolutely no delusions of an epic Tristan and Isolde affair, not because I’m a cynic or because I’m getting on in years, but because those motherf*ckers were what? 14 years-old? I’m an adult. You know what makes my heart flutter as an adult? Someone who reads. Someone who doesn’t do ‘shrooms with the alcoholic chick that lives upstairs and who knows when I’m supposed to change the tires on my car before I inevitably explode them. I don’t need a man to take care of me, I’ll be making doctor money, but I’d like someone who’s employed and ambitious. I want to be with someone who bests me intellectually in at least two subjects, someone with whom I can sustain adult conversations, who will challenge and excite me intellectually as well as sexually. As far as starting a family, I want someone who is on the same page in regards to children (once I figure out if I want them) and how to raise them (if we decide yes…or if birth control becomes illegal). Maybe I won’t feel butterflies or immediately feel that I would give my life for him, but that stuff can grow with the right ingredients. Adult love is based on logic, it may not be terribly romantic, but it certainly isn’t “settling”. If more people realized that, I’d wager to say divorce rates in this world would be a hell of a lot lower.

*Longest run-on sentence ever, or ode to Kerouac? You decide.