According to author Lori Gottlieb’s new book Marry Him The Case Of Settling For Mr. Good Enough is you’re a 20 or 30 something looking for Mr. Right it may be time to stop looking and settle, here’s what she has to say about your love life:

We’re conditioned to crave that Big Love. It’s painful how pervasive the fantasy is that ‘The One’ is out there. We grew up idealising marriage, but if we’d had a more realistic understanding of its cold, hard benefits, we might have done things differently. So we walked away from uninspiring relationships that might have made us happy. When we’re holding out for romantic love, we have the fantasy that this level of passionate intensity will make us happier. But marrying Mr Good Enough might be equally viable, especially if you’re looking for a reliable life companion.

What makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane and often boring non-profit business. And I mean this in a good way. Of course, women are loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring, 40-year-old, single, heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. She’ll say what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).

In reality, we aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle; we’re women who want a family. Every woman I know – no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure – feels panic, coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and is unmarried. Whether you acknowledge it or not, there’s good reason to worry. By the time 35th birthday brunch celebrations roll around for still-single women, serious, irreversible life issues masquerading as ‘jokes’ creep into public conversation: ‘Well, I don’t feel old, but my eggs sure do.’ or ‘Maybe this year I’ll marry Todd. I’m not getting any younger.’

The birthday girl smiles a bit too widely as she delivers these lines, and everyone laughs a little too hard for a little too long – not because we find these sentiments funny, but because we’re awkwardly acknowledging how unfunny they are. At their core, they pose one of the most complicated, painful and pervasive dilemmas many single women are forced to grapple with nowadays: Is it better to be alone or to settle?

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling ‘Bravo!’ in movie theatres. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go.

Tagged as: Books, Couples, Lori Gottlieb, Love, Marriage, Marry Him, Mr. Good Enough, Mr. Right, Relationships