You may have heard the buzz about Lori Gottlieb’s new book, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. The thesis of Gottlieb’s book is that women of marriageable age shouldn’t be so picky when it comes to choosing a mate. Instead of holding out for a 10, they should settle for an 8.

The thinking goes that modern women are too focused on checklists. They too often waste their shot at happiness by turning dating into a kind of scavenger hunt, only considering a guy as a potential partner if he drives the right kind of car, likes the right kind of films, works the right kind of job, and sports the right kind of haircut.

Gottlieb contends that picky women will only end up kicking themselves later in life. While they’re still waiting around for the mythical Mr. Right, the competition is settling down with Mr. Good Enough. The lesson: Lower standards lead to marriage and happiness, while impossibly high standards keep a girl single and miserable.
Thanks, but no thanks
We’d like to issue a preemptive response to all the women out there who are thinking about lowering their standards and giving us regular guys a second look.

So, on behalf of single men everywhere: Thanks, but no thanks. Please don’t settle for us.

Don’t get us wrong; it’s awfully nice of you to let us spend the rest of our lives trying to make you happy despite our obvious deficiencies. We’re honored that you’re willing to consider letting us buy you a diamond ring — even though our eyes are the wrong color and you’re embarrassed by our lack of wine knowledge. Really, we appreciate it. But the truth is we’re just not comfortable treating marriage like an insurance policy taken out against the prospect of future loneliness — so, please don’t settle for us.
Settling is not the solution
While we appreciate that this new doctrine might make some women think twice about dumping a perfectly nice guy just because he chews with his mouth full or uses words like “irregardless,” no guy wants to be a fallback option. We want you to marry us because you love us, not because we’re better than the alternative of ending up as a crazy cat lady. So do us a favor: Don’t settle for us.

Frankly, we suspect the concepts of “settling” and “marital bliss” are actually at odds with each other. And besides, guys know the woman with a checklist doesn’t ever really abandon that list — she just represses it. She may try to deny her unreasonable expectations, but they’re still there. They’re always there, below the surface, until one day they explosively reveal themselves in the form of an itemized outburst detailing all of the things she’s sacrificed for her disappointing marriage.

Our rant on why we don’t want you to settle for us continues…

The perverse nature of checklists
Maybe you think we’re being wishy-washy, here: We don’t want women to rigidly adhere to checklists and we don’t want women to settle. But isn’t there another option? Isn’t there some way in which women could make decisions about us without resorting to a numerical scale? There’s something kind of perverse about reducing a man to the sum of his parts.

Renaissance sonneteers used to describe female beauty by listing off body parts: ruby red lips, alabaster skin, golden blond hair, eyes like diamonds. It makes for great poetry, but it’s kind of creepy, even a little inhuman in the way it emphasizes the parts of a woman to the detriment of the whole. And just as a beautiful woman is more than a pair of perfectly shaped lips coupled with a great pair of eyes, a man is more than a set of attributes and assets.
a better system
It may surprise some women that the idea of a checklist is a little foreign to guys. In fact, most of us don’t even have one. Sure, men have deal breakers within relationships just like women do, but we typically allow problems to manifest themselves before we make a decision whether or not to date a woman. We don’t usually sit across the table from our dates trying to figure out what’s wrong with them.

We get to know them. We learn their virtues and vices. Eventually, we discover their idiosyncrasies, which are sometimes deal breakers and other times they’re the things we love most about our partners. We know, as dating strategies go, it’s not flashy or glitzy, but it’s a pretty good system. You might want to try it.

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