Marry Him: The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by switch » Fri, Mar 12, 2010, 6:50 AM UTC

ardit33 wrote: post #3

It might sound awful, but this is one of the reasons I avoid dating 28+ girls (I am 29 myself). 1. Too much pressure. (even if it is not explicit, given her standing, it is implicit) 2. I don't know if she likes me for me, or just because her clock is ticking. On the flip side, girls it have really really easy on their early 20s. That might create an "suply is infinite" kind of thinking in girls, and maybe perhaps ev…

you're lucky if you only find 28+ girls who are dying to get married. Almost every girl I meet above 23 is looking to get hitched. Around 25 they learn to pretend they don't want it but they keep pushing things in that direction.

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

#92

Post by elptacek » Fri, Mar 19, 2010, 7:34 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #60

thegoleffect wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, when I read the article it sounded like this passive mindset. Why leave it to chance when you can train someone hehe! That, to me, is the right attitude.

What's the saying? Men marry women expecting that they won't change and they do. Women marry men expecting that they will change and they don't. Yes, some men are trainable. But you had better verify that he's sufficiently trainable for your needs before marrying him.

This sounds like a great self-help book. Think it'd get me on Oprah?

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

#93

Post by elptacek » Sat, Mar 20, 2010, 12:32 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #33

elptacek wrote: post #11

This article is long and makes me want to throw something at Lori Gottlieb. Not that I'm advocating violence or would commit it... it's just written in that sort of smug, grating style that makes me browse away after the first 10 paragraphs. All she has done is rebranded the concept of "compromise" (important in all sorts of relationships) as "settling." Nothing new or fascinating, there. The deconstruction is hilari…

I think your advice for young women is good. That is what my wife did 20 years ago. Of course as a result she has to put up with me. While I claim this is a good outcome, it is hardly a perfect one... 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 i…

When I said religious, I didn't mean one of any organized religion that begins with a capital letter. I meant it in the sense of social construct. By my definition, atheism is a belief construct and falls into the subcategory under philosophy as a 'religion.' This is a pretty unpopular assertion, so I don't make it often, but it helps for clarification. To wit, legal constructs should be as abstracted from a single belief system as functionally possible, since beliefs vary so widely from one individual to the next. And because any legal system based on ideology is fraught with bugs. The description of a ship with no captain, in Plato's Republic, describes this in a way that is still disturbingly applicable to our modern political and social dynamic.

A more simple way of putting it would be, "if you believe marriage has meaning, then it has meaning." True for anything, right? Now if we could only agree on what is meaningful, and what is not...