Alien Species

[rowyn]

msagara had a link to this rather sad little article titled "Marry Him!"

It's an article that bothered me on a few levels, most conspicuously for the blind assertion that every single woman in the world desperately wants to have a baby and the only possible explanation for any protestations to the contrary is denial or deceit. But that point is so mind-bogglingly stupid that I won't comment on it further because really, what's to say? It's like arguing with The Truth.

No, the really sad part was the notion that imperfect people were unworthy of, and indeed impossible to, love.

I don't know if that's the impression Gottlieb meant to give, though it's certainly the one I got. The first half of her apparent message, 'Don't wait for Mr. Perfect' isn't bad, but the corollary she sets up for it -- 'take whoever you can sink your claws into' -- is just such a depressing way to look at other human beings.

I feel so far from Gottlieb's way of thinking that she might as well be an alien species. I don't want to have a baby, I don't want to get married, I'm not afraid of being alone, I've never understood the whole "dating" thing.

Of course, I'm not afraid of being alone because I've barely ever been alone. I think I've had maybe four months of being single, in the "no significant other" sense, in my adult life. I can't imagine having Gottlieb's problem of not being able to find someone worth loving. I don't understand how most people manage to stop finding people worth loving. There are so many of them out there, all you wonderful, sexy, imaginative, intelligent, creative people.

I can't imagine deciding I shouldn't love Lut because he didn't have a college degree. I mean, WTF? Do people really rate their prospective partners on these criteria? "Oh, I can't love him, he's a plumber"? "No, he doesn't like hiking, it'll never work"? How do you do that? What about all the amazing and unique talents that he does have? Why would it be "settling" to realize that you love someone who's not perfect? What, like you are?

Why would it be difficult to love someone who's not perfect?

Yeah ... alien species. I have no chance of relating.

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

there is no such thing is perfect. None of us are perfect. In fact, for some people, it is the imperfections that make the canvas valuable. A blank canvas could be called perfect, but it is worthless.

People need to stop looking for perfect and just find someone to love who will love back. You don't have to have a carbon copy of yourself to find love (and in fact, it would bore me to tears, which would doom the relationship) It isn't "settling" to pick someone who is good - these days even good is hard to come by.

[octantis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not too sure I'd want to court someone who required a resume.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Being with someone means spending time with them. If they're not interested in the same things, that means spending time doing stuff you're not interested in, and having them be bored and possibly passive-agressively sabotage your fun when you get to actually try to do something you like.

I see this all the time whenever my mom comes to visit, it's why I can't stand spending more than a few days with my family. Being *married* to someone like that would *suck*.

Would it suck more than being alone? Yeah, I think it would. Although being alone sucks ass.

Also, what's with this 'deciding to love' bit? Do you have a switch installed or something? O.o Because I don't seem to have that dial to flip.

[rowyn]

Some of it depends on how you define "spending time". I know couples who've been pretty happy going out to dinner and watching a movie a few times a week, and do their own thing the rest of the time. And this works for them. Even though Lut and I are both gamers, we often don't play the same games so we spend a lot of time focused on different activities. I play stuff like PBEMs and Puzzle Pirates, and he plays FPS and RTS games. It works fine as long as both parties have that expectation. But it's nightmarish if they don't.

Though I think it does help that we're both gamers, because even when we're playing different games we have an appreciation for what the other person's spending all their time on. It doesn't get into a "I don't see what you see in those games" situation that I've seen with gamer/non-gamer couples, which always looks pretty uncomfortable to me.

Also, what's with this 'deciding to love' bit?

I don't get that either. The whole dating thing, I don't get. Pretty much all my relationships have been either "I am friends with this person and we're not romantically involved" or "I am in love with this person and I want a romantic relationship with him". I've never done the "I'm dating him to figure out if I like him enough to have a relationship" thing. I don't understand how that works. I've heard SO MUCH about it, I know countless media based on the assumption that dating is how relationships begin, but I don't grok it at all. I grok the difference between "loving" and "being in love". But not "dating". I don't get how some women can make lists of "what I want in a man" and then decide to dump a man because he only meets 5 out of 8 criteria. It's just ... alien.

I think it may be that I skip the "getting to know you by dating" stage and do a "getting to know you by being friends" stage instead. Which seems a whole lot less awkward to me than dating.

[telnar.livejournal.com]

I think it may be that I skip the "getting to know you by dating" stage and do a "getting to know you by being friends" stage instead. Which seems a whole lot less awkward to me than dating.

That sounds eminently sensible and more pleasant in many ways. The gotcha is that if one completely ignores whether potential friends are available for relationships and an appropriate gender, it's not difficult to end up finding that none of them are. At that point, one has to decide whether to be more conscious about looking for friends who are relationship candidates (which is probably going to feel like dating -- especially if it includes focusing at the beginning more on the features which make them relationship candidates that on the features that make them potential friends).

As an aside, there are other features besides not being available that might doom a relationship but be just fine for a friendship. For example, people who are very close to their pets can still have friends with pet allergies. Similarly, someone might dislike kissing a person who smoked recently -- a problem which wouldn't arise in a friendship.

One way around this problem (which might work better for stereotypical women than for stereotypical men) would be if relationship candidates naturally notice you more often than other people do (perhaps because they are conscious or subconsciously looking for a relationship). That would let you look for friends among those who you meet and later discover the happy coincidence that a statistically improbable fraction of them are available.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

I relate to you. And I'm glad. :-)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Phrased that way ... which would be harder, to love someone who wasn't perfect, or someone who was?

[rowyn]

Perfect people are easier to love, 'cause they're imaginary. My imaginary friends rarely give me trouble. (Occasionally, yes, but not as often as the real ones.) ;)

[wildcard-47.livejournal.com]

Whew. I could only read part of that article before I had to toss it aside and save my personal sanity.

The whole idea bothers me deeply. As you pointed out, there are plenty of women in this world who don't share the author's goals of snagging the perfect husband and having lots of perfect babies. And the idea of "settling", in the sense that no one is ever going to be 100% perfect for you, is just so stupid. Because that should be common sense.

For me (one of the pleasantly single), it's not that I don't date because there's no one "right" enough for me. Like you said, there are plenty of wonderful people out there, and I personally just haven't found someone who I'm comfortable enough with as my "significant other".

I don't get how some women can make lists of "what I want in a man" and then decide to dump a man because he only meets 5 out of 8 criteria. It's just ... alien.
I totally agree. Then again, this whole article made me feel alien...

[rowyn]

And the idea of "settling", in the sense that no one is ever going to be 100% perfect for you, is just so stupid. Because that should be common sense.

Yeah. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if what she really wanted to say was "don't count on that 'in love' feeling lasting for your entire relationship. Stay with the relationship anyway". Which would make sense as advice.

But there's that whole dating thing that obviously makes sense to her and doesn't to me, so I think it's hopeless for me to try to understand her.

[wildcard-47.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I feel like she was going for that type of 'love's not going to be butterflies and roses, and you shouldn't expect that, unless you'd like to be disappointed' type of sentiment, but then she just....sidetracked and failed.

I think what saddened me the most was the idea that women would have to give up their optimism regarding love, and would have to look for a person who -- completely ignoring the idea of one not "living up to expectations" -- just might not make them happy. It's like she's saying older, unmarried women will eventually have to deal with a little unhappiness in marriage to have the "nuclear family". The fact that she seems to be saying 'find a person who may or may not make your life a little better because he's in it' is just so...tragic, almost.