Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Ever meet a couple where the woman is clearly and constantly annoyed with everything her husband/boyfriend does, to the point where she sighs and snipes at him and rolls her eyes so much that it makes everyone in the room uncomfortable with how miserable they are, and their whole relationship feels like one giant raw nerve that stings with every touch, and you can't help but wonder why this poor couple stayed together so long when the dislike between them is so thick you could cut it with a knife? How did she end up with him in the first place when she seems to actively hate, or, at best, condescendingly tolerate the man she's with? Does he only stay with her because he's too much of a loser to do better? What's going on with that relationship? That's a woman who settled, folks.

It's weird that women are scolded and harangued for being "picky" when statistics show that single, childless women tend to be happier in the long-term than married mothers. In other words, "settling" is not in a woman's best interest. Only low-quality men benefit when women settle because they get a woman to take care of them without having to make any effort to improve their physical appearance or make themselves more appealing to women. When women settle, they have to force themselves to enter into a physical relationship with an unattractive man and force themselves to spend the rest of their life with a man whose company they don't love. In other words, there is no benefit to women in settling. It's actually a grueling and pointless endeavor.
The only reason for a woman to marry in this day and age is for love and happiness, so if those qualities are not present in the relationship, there is no benefit to settling. Love cannot be forced. Attraction cannot be forced. Happiness cannot be forced.
This book treats a woman's desire to be sexually attracted to her sexual partner as somehow unreasonable, unrealistic, even immoral. Which is... insane. Of course women expect to be attracted to their partners. Are men ordered to settle for ugly women? Of course not. Men expect to be attracted to their wives, and wives should expect to be attracted to their husbands. This is all very simple, folks. If there aren't enough attractive men to go around in our society, well, that's a whole big pile of Not Your Problem. For women, studies show you're actually better off remaining single and dedicating yourself to friendship, career, charity, and high-quality experiences than settling if you want to be happy when you're older.
Don't settle, ladies. Lowering your expectations for a man may result in a wedding ring, but a ring doesn't necessarily result in long-term happiness. "Good enough" might be okay for the desperate and the lonely, but don't conflate those qualities with being single. And don't conflate marriage with happy companionship, because that doesn't necessarily work out either.
Settling is for those who are already unhappy, and expect to remain so for the rest of their lives.
"Mr. Good Enough" may be good enough for Mrs. Gottlieb, but he isn't good enough for me.