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Marry Him

The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough

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Marry Him

Written by: Lori Gottlieb
Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
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About this listen

Lori Gottlieb discusses Marry Him in a video on The Atlantic website.

You have a fulfilling job, a great group of friends, the perfect apartment, and no shortage of dates. So what if you haven't found The One just yet. Surely he'll come along, right?

But what if he doesn't? Or even worse, what if he already has, but you just didn't realize it?

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.

Looking at her friends' happy marriages to good enough guys who happen to be excellent husbands and fathers, Gottlieb declared it time to reevaluate what we really need in a partner. Her ideas created a firestorm of controversy from outlets like the Today show to The Washington Post, which wrote, "Given the perennial shortage of perfect men, Gottlieb's probably got a point," to Newsweek and NPR, which declared, "Lori Gottlieb didn't want to take her mother's advice to be less picky, but now that she's turned forty, she wonders if her mother is right." Women all over the world were talking. But while many people agreed that they should have more realistic expectations, what did that actually mean out in the real world, where Gottlieb and women like her were inexorably drawn to their "type"?

That's where Marry Him comes in.

By looking at everything from culture to biology, in Marry Him Gottlieb frankly explores the dilemma that so many women today seem to face--how to reconcile the strong desire for a husband and family with a list of must-haves so long and complicated that many great guys get rejected out of the gate. Here Gottlieb shares her own journey in the quest for romantic fulfillment, and in the process gets wise guidance and surprising insights from marital researchers, matchmakers, dating coaches, behavioral economists, neuropsychologists, sociologists, couples therapists, divorce lawyers, and clergy--as well as single and married men and women, ranging in age from their twenties to their sixties.

Marry Him is an eye-opening, often funny, sometimes painful, and always truthful in-depth examination of the modern dating landscape, and ultimately, a provocative wake-up call about getting real about Mr. Right. Love & Romance Marriage Relationships Self-Help Success
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While the book makes a few good points about picking the important values to find a match in someone and then fall in love gradually, there are a few instances where the author assents to a bunch of sexist trites often touted by men who are angry at all womankind as a result of the few who've dumped them (Eg: she agrees to a man who anonymously writes online that he has every right to dump a woman after she loses her looks with age since she would likely dump him if he eve lost his money). She also seems to strongly believe that ALL women eventually would want to get married, and hence any who hold off for a while for any reason, are making a huge mistake. Generalisations like these slightly dilute the overall messaging of the book. And I think would sound like a rather alarmist book to any reader above the age of 35 (I'm not).

Wasn't as convinced as I'd hoped to be

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…based on lived-experience and research. This book isn’t the case for marrying just anyone, but for realising what we must value in long-term partnerships and what doesn’t work while we search.

Amazing resource..

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It was a dump of her half formed thoughts and could have just been a blogpost.

Skip it unless you need to be convinced to settle

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