Marry Him: The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough

With my career:

I get bored after 1 year, and have never stayed at a company for more than 18 months. Once I understand a company/team, it's hard to picture settling for this position and the realistic growth prospects forever. I'm always networking to find the next job/startup that is more promising than what I have now.

You can fill in the parallels with women, except these feelings creep in even faster.

The confusing bit is, doing this with a job is rewarded. My salary and reputation is much higher for moving around than staying one place.

It's not dissimilar with women. I've been dating more and more attractive women, and I have an easier time bagging them, then dumping them quickly or converting to a relationship depending on how I feel.

I'm a pretty humble person, but on good days I think I will continue to churn through new opportunities for 10 more years, and becoming a rich startup founder with a cool, hot wife isn't out of the question.

At least with respect to his career, how many HN readers don't think this way?

But more and more days now I feel weary. I don't want to work on tons side projects in case they take off, I don't want to hit on strangers at the bar. I want to work reasonable hours, and come home to a woman that is happy to see me.

But still that voice tells me not to settle... When will it, if ever?

However as a married atheist I have to point out that marriage is a legal and social construct and not strictly a religious one. I have no trouble pointing to past societies where it was very religious, and ones where it was not religious at all. In short marriage has meaning, and it has meaning for non-religious people as well.

In fact, the divorce rate among atheists is lower than the general public. So one could make a case that marriage matters more to atheists than to the general public!

Make a concious decision to try and settle down with one of the first 6 girls you date. Here's the rules:

1) don't settle for the first one you date.

2) the next one you date that is better than the first one you dated is the one you settle for.

Why? Do the math. Let's label them 123456.

If you date 1 first, you have 1 in 5 chance of ending up with any of the others (1 in 30 for each)

If you date 2 first, you end up with 1 (1 in 6)

If you date 3 first, you can end up with 1 or 2 (1 in 12 each)

If you date 4 first, you can end up with 1, 2 or 3 (1 in 18 each)

If you date 5 first, you end up with 1, 2, 3 or 4 (1 in 24 each)

If you date 6 first, you end up with 1,2 .. 5 (1 in 30 each).

Add that up, and the odds of you settling for each woman are:

1 - 38.1%, 2 - 24.7%, 3 - 16.4%, 4 - 10.1%, 5 - 6.7%, 6 - 3.3%

So, 79.2% of the time you "settle" for someone above average. And, for the other 20.8%? You can always split up before it's too late :)

I will posit that there exist women who don't base their self-worth and happiness entirely on the approval and acceptance of a man. I will further posit that there are women who aren't married by 30 because they haven't met someone they want to marry yet and are totally OK with that.

Later first marriages are more likely to last anyway.

(And do men really want to be settled for? Like "sure I'll marry you; you're not totally horrible"?)