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.