Should I Settle?

“Should I just settle?” My friend, who I’ll call Maude, asked me this recently after another bad date with someone she met online.

Maude is in her late thirties. She was engaged years ago to a man who cheated on her, and she broke it off. The next guy she dated, she pushed away for several reasons that seemed valid at the time, but he quickly married someone else not long after their breakup. She’s declared him the One Who Got Away for nearly four years now. She’s hilarious, beautiful, and very frustrated. Maude is one of a number of friends questioning their choices in men.

As a woman who last went on my last first date when Bill Clinton was president, I may not be the best person to answer this question, but I will try.

First, I can absolutely sympathize with them all regarding the agony of dating at a time in your life when many of your friends are already in the kid-raising phase, and the pool of eligible people to date seems to shrink by the day. Maude says she isn’t sure if she wants biological children but likes knowing it’s an option. Meanwhile, the internet and every married friend she knows are right there to let her know about the challenges of geriatric pregnancies and decreased fertility. Fun times.

To me, this question though, spurred another one: What do she and others mean by settling? Do they mean giving up important values they desire in a partner in favor of simply having a companion? Or does it mean that they cut their lists of must-haves/must-be from 50 to 25?

When I was mostly single in my teens to early 20s, I always hated it when people told me I was too picky. At the time, I just wanted someone who could make me laugh, make me think, whose presence I enjoyed, and whose bones I wanted to jump. It didn’t sound like a tall order, but it felt like it would never happen.

I didn’t think about what my “dream guy” did for work, his connections with his friends and family, his hobbies, his love language, or his previous relationship history. I didn’t have to – those things didn’t seem important in a boyfriend. I also didn’t think about how he would handle it if one of our parents died, or if one of us got sick, or if our child had problems, and on and on.

I recognize at this point in my life that those things DO matter over time. I have many divorced friends who realized that some of those things mattered more than they ever realized years into marriage. It’s one reason a friend who married at 25 said she tells everyone they should marry after 30 – you change, and what you want changes. I’m not going to weigh in on the right age to get married, but I will say this: life is complicated and gets increasingly more so over time.

As we get older, we also get more set in our ways and comfortable in our routines. It becomes that much harder to find someone who fits into the life we’ve built. I remember, as a kid, asking my mom why her singing teacher, who was single and looking, didn’t just marry anyone. (Ah, naïve young me understood very little about the world.)

My idea of marriage back then was based on easily meeting Mr. Wonderful, probably by spending the day in detention with him or having him find my note confessing my love for him, or by seeing that I was really special even if I wasn't popular and worked in a record store. (Fine, I was watching a lot of John Hughes movies back then.) A few years later, we'd have a beautiful wedding and an amazing dreamy problem-free life. It is no wonder so many people struggle to stay satisfied in relationships with the unrealistic concept of happily ever after that we're bombarded with from an early age.

Back to answering the original question: I told my friends that they needed to figure out their top three to five must-haves or deal breakers. In Maude's case, she said she wants someone who has never been married and doesn’t have children. Others said they want someone who earns more than they do, has a great large family because theirs isn’t, loves to travel, and must love cats.

I said that they all have a right to stick to whatever deal breakers they want, but I told Maude that hers could potentially rule out a lot of great people.

The other thing I told them all about settling is to remember that anyone they find to couple up with will most likely settle for some aspect of them that isn’t ideal. Everyone has their imperfections and shortcomings. Settling is a two-way street. We all hope to find someone willing to accept us, flaws and all, and whose flaws don’t drive us to want to run away in the future.

Committing to someone is a giant leap of faith. Some say the modern concept of marriage doesn’t work today since we live much longer lives, and it’s hard to find one person to fulfill all our needs.

So, should these friends settle? I told Maude that giving up core beliefs to please someone else is never a good thing, but remaining flexible about the other details might surprise her. Just tonight, she told me she recently went on a date with someone divorced after reassessing her original deal-breaker list. But now she’s considering adding heavy accents to it.

Oh, Maude.