Mr. Good Enough

Writer Lori Gottlieb has a new book with some advice for you single gals: “Settle!” 


Gottlieb’s book Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, argues that all you educated, goal-oriented single women can’t get hitched because you’re too damned picky.


As you can imagine, the book has caused quite a kerfuffle. 


Double X’s Jessica Grose writes that while “Gottlieb spends more than 300 pages trying to convince us that there is an unhappy army of spinsters just like her—lady lawyers, doctors, and graphic designers regretting their fussiness” the statistics don’t actually back up this claim.  Grose goes on to say:


“It’s true that the percentage of married women has been declining since the ’70s. But that decline has nothing to do with those unhappy lawyers and graphic designers. In fact, college-educated women… are still getting married at extremely high rates. And these days they are far more likely to stay married than they were 40 years ago. Marriage, in fact, has never been kinder to the professional woman.”


And, of course, folks are also asking the question: What about love?


Gottlieb was on the Today Show yesterday and she maintained that her book really is about finding true love. She says she’s not encouraging women to lower their standards, but to look at what really matters in love and to let go of unrealistic expectations. Check out her interview:  

I think that no woman should settle, but I do believe that women and men should check their expectations and make sure they are rooted in their true desires and not the sexist gender roles our society perpetuates. This is why I say feminists do it better. Some claim that feminist women emasculate their men and can’t have peaceful relationships. I say this couldn’t be further from the truth. It is my feminism and my husband’s respect for it that make our relationship happy and healthy.


Amanda Marcotte said it best: 


“I will say that being a feminist seems to make love a lot easier in most ways. When you can declutter yourself of the role-playing and expectations put on you by a sexist culture, and commit yourself to looking at someone as a human being, it just goes more smoothly. And it’s more fun.”