How Feminism Fucked Up My Love Life: A Selection from Lori Gottlieb’s Marry Him (2010)

“I know this is an unpopular thing to say, but feminism has completely fucked up my love life. To be fair, it’s not feminism, exactly—after all, ‘feminism’ never published a dating manual—but what I considered to be ‘the feminist way of doing things’ certainly didn’t help. It’s not that I would give back the gains of feminism for anything. Believe me, I wouldn’t. It’s just that I wish I hadn’t tried to apply what I believed to be ‘feminist ideals’ to dating.

Growing up, my friends and I thought feminism was fabulous. To us, feminism meant we had ‘freedom’ and ‘choice’ in all aspects of our lives. We could pursue professional careers, take time to ‘find ourselves’ before getting married, decide not to get married at all, and have our sexual needs met whenever we felt like it. The fact that we didn’t need a man to have a fulfilling life felt empowering. After all, who wanted to do what our moms did—find a man, marry him, and have kids—all before most of us had gotten our first promotion?

But then, in our late twenties and early thirties, as more of us moved from relationship to relationship, or went long periods with no meaningful relationship at all, we didn’t feel quite so empowered. The truth was, every one of my single friends wanted to be married, but none of us would admit how badly we craved it for fear of sounding weak or needy or, God forbid, antifeminist. We were the generation of women who were supposed to be independent and self-sufficient, but we didn’t have a clue how to navigate this modern terrain without sacrificing some core desires. . . .

It wasn’t until I found myself still single in my late thirties that something hit me. Maybe the problem was this misconception: We thought that ‘having it all’ equaled ‘happily ever after.’ Except that a lot of us weren’t so happy.

Instead, I started to see a pattern that went like this: We grew up believing that we could ‘have it all.’ ‘Having it all’ meant that we shouldn’t compromise in any area of life, including dating. Not compromising meant ‘having high standards.’ The higher our standards, the more ‘empowered’ we were. But were we?

Here’s what actually happened: Empowerment somehow became synonymous with having impossible standards and disregarding the fact that in real life, you can’t get everything you want, when you want it, on your terms only. Which is exactly how many of us empowered ourselves out of a good mate. . . .

I was so busy trying to ‘have it all’ that I lost sight of what might make me happy in a marriage. Marriage used to be thought of as comfortable and stable, and those were good things. But since women don’t need marriage for economic security and even to have children anymore, the primary purpose of marriage, many singles say today, is to make us happy—immediately and always. We don’t wait to see if connection develops by spending real time with a person. If a relationship takes too much effort, we decide it’s no longer making us happy, and we bail. The One doesn’t get grumpy. The One doesn’t misunderstand us. The One doesn’t want some alone time after work when we want to give him the rundown of our day.

In my mother’s generation, you were ‘happy’ in your marriage because you had a family together, you had companionship, you had a teammate, you had stability and security. Now women say they also need all-consuming passion, stimulation, excitement, and fifty other things our mothers never had on their checklists. . . .

Somehow, post-Jane Austen, it’s become shameful for a woman to admit how lonely she is and how strongly she wants to be part of a traditional family. What kind of educated, sophisticated modern woman with an active social life has time to be lonely? You’re lonely? Get a life! Get a promotion! Get a hobby! Get a hair-cut! You go, girl!

I remember seeing a group of women on a morning TV news show discussing the fact that they’d rather be alone than with Mr. Good Enough. Would they? Really? They’d rather be 40 years old and going to bars with a group of female friends who are all looking past them for Mr. Right to walk in the door? None of the women on the show was movie-star attractive, a fact that didn’t seem to shake their belief that they’d land Prince Charming. . . .

My 29-year-old colleague Haley told me that while she’d like to go through life with a partner, she doesn’t want to have to change for anyone. But is that empowerment or inflexibility? Isn’t change integral to compromise and being in a mature relationship? Has ‘girl power’ made us self-absorbed, poor partners? . . .

In a 2007 Time magazine article entitled ‘Who Needs a Husband?’ (um, me), Sex and the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker is quoted as saying that because women don’t have to rely on men for financial support anymore, ‘my friends are looking for a relationship as fulfilling, challenging, and fun as the one they have with their girlfriends.’

What an idiotic idea! No matter how much I enjoy my female friendships, I don’t want my marriage to be like the relationship I have with my girlfriends. I doubt very many of us would. Factor in your girlfriends’ emotional requirements and quirks and mood swings and imagine how ‘fulfilling, challenging, and fun’ it would be to live with them 24/7 for the rest of your life. Your girlfriend may listen ad nauseam to the minutiae of your day, but is she really the person you want to raise kids and run a household with? . . .

Whether we admit it or not, being single is often lonely, especially by the time we reach our mid-thirties and many of our friends are busy with families of their own. It’s not that women don’t feel complete without a man. It’s that if no man is an island, most women aren’t, either. How lonely it was, before I had my son, to wake up in an empty house every morning, eat breakfast alone, read the paper alone, do the dishes alone. . . .

What matters is finding the perfect partner—not the perfect person. It’s not about lowering your standards—it’s about maturing and having reasonable expectations. . . . I wanted men to accept me for who I was, but I wasn’t willing to accept them for who they were. . . . I’d always focused on what compromises I’d have to make to be with someone else, but I didn’t seriously consider the second part—that being with me wouldn’t be winning the lottery either. And no wonder. Like most women, I had friends constantly telling me what a great ‘catch’ I was, that any guy would be ‘lucky’ to have me, and that I should never compromise when choosing a mate. . . .

It’s become such a cliché to talk about Sex and the City that I almost don’t want to bring it up. But I can’t resist because it seems related to this attitude of entitlement. . . . In case you were one of the few single women who missed the movie, Samantha tells her wonderful boyfriend, who stood by her through breast cancer, that she’s leaving him because, ‘I love you, but I love myself more’—and the entire audience cheered! Now, this was a boyfriend who was loyal and loving and hot and put up with her demands and went through cancer with her, and she decided to leave him because she’s in love with herself. And this was supposed to be empowering? Reverse the genders (she sticks by him through a grueling bout of prostate cancer; he bails!), and I’m betting the entire audience would have booed and called the guy a total ass.

Samantha isn’t the only character with a raging sense of entitlement. Carrie is a nightmare Bridezilla who’s outraged when her fiancé tells her he’d be happy to marry her at City Hall. He says he cares not about a wedding day, but about being with her every day. So what does she do? Carrie and her equally self-absorbed friends go off to Mexico on her would-be honeymoon and—guess what?—complain about men. Her circus of a wedding day didn’t go as planned, and now she’s on her honeymoon without her beloved husband-to-be. Is this ‘strong’ or ‘spoiled’?

The TV series wasn’t much different. Each week, the characters would dissect various men. There was no room for imperfection, and if the guy didn’t also feel that his girlfriend was perfect, well, obviously, she should dump him. . . .

According to a social scientist named Barry Schwartz, there are two kinds of people in the world: maximizers and satisficers, and these two advice-seeking women seem like classic maximizers. In fact, they sound like a lot of single women, including me. This isn’t a good thing, especially when it comes to dating. In his eye-opening book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, Schwartz explains the difference between maximizers and satisficers like this: Say you want to buy a new sweater. You decide that it needs to be well-fitting, stylish, not itchy, a pretty color, and in your price range. Say it even has to go with a specific outfit. A satisficer walks into a store or two, finds a sweater that meets all of these criteria, and buys it. She’s done.

A maximizer, on the other hand, walks into a store, picks out a sweater that meets all of these criteria, and thinks, This sweater is nice, but maybe I should look at that cute store down the street. Maybe I can find something I like better. Maybe I can find something on sale. So the maximizer hides the pretty sweater on the bottom of the pile (so that nobody else buys it) and goes to check out another store (or five).

Now, you might think that the maximizer will end up with a better sweater—after all, she’s looked at more possibilities—but that’s not necessarily the case. A satisficer isn’t looking for the absolute best, but she does have high standards. The difference is, she stops when she’s found something that meets those high standards.

She wants something stylish, and she’s found it, so she doesn’t wonder if she can find something more stylish at another store. She wants something in her price range, and she’s found it, so she doesn’t wonder if she can find a better value at another store. She wants a flattering fit, and she’s found it, so she doesn’t wonder if she can find an even more flattering fit at another boutique.

A maximizer, on the other hand, will spend another three hours or three days looking for the perfect sweater, even though she may not find anything better, leaving her to buy the sweater she’d hid under the pile on the display table. (If it’s still there, which by now, it probably isn’t. A satisficer has already bought it!)

But let’s say that the maximizer does find a slightly cuter sweater, or a slightly less expensive one. Will she be happier with her purchase than the satisficer is with hers? Probably not, Schwartz says. That’s because while a satisficer is content with something great, a maximizer is content only with the absolute best. And since you can never be sure that you got the absolute best—you can’t see every sweater in the entire city; new styles will appear in store windows the very next week and you may like one of those better—the whole process is fraught with anxiety.

Meanwhile, think of all the time and energy wasted on making this decision, all for 5 percent cuter, or ten dollars cheaper that, in the long run, won’t really matter. Instead of having agonized for all that time, you’d be warm and stylish, and probably even get a few compliments.

But now, because you’ve put so much effort into finding the perfect sweater, the stakes are even higher for you to have picked just the right one. It’s like women who say, ‘I’ve waited this long for Mr. Right, I’m not going to settle now.’ The longer you wait and the more you search, the ‘better’ the sweater—or the guy—is going to have to be. You don’t want to have gone through all that struggle and turmoil only to end up with a ‘good enough’ sweater or a ‘good enough’ guy just like the one you could have had and enjoyed years earlier. Which is all the more reason to buy the cute enough sweater and choose the good enough guy the first time around.

Okay, a sweater isn’t a relationship, obviously, but whether it’s about a sweater or a romantic partner, satisficers tend to be happier in life than maximizers. Satisficers know when they’ve found what they want, even if it’s not perfect. Maximizers either keep looking for someone better and never choose anyone, or they choose someone but will always wonder whether they’ve settled. They don’t understand that not getting 100 percent of what we want isn’t just ‘acceptable’—it’s normal.

When I called Barry Schwartz at Swarthmore College, where he’s a professor, he explained the maximizer’s predicament like this: ‘You’re continually looking over your shoulder to see if there’s something better. And the more you look over your shoulder, the less good you’ll end up feeling about your partner or a potential partner—even though he’s probably just as good, on balance, as the people you’re looking at.’ . . . Instead of wondering, Am I happy?, maximizers wonder, Is this the best I can do? . . .

Some people deal with their fear of buyer’s remorse by hedging their bets: They live together so that they can decide later whether to fully commit. They buy the proverbial good enough sweater as long as it has a return policy. They may say that living together provides more information about how compatible they are in the long-term. They may even say that they care so much about having a successful marriage that they want to do everything they can to make sure it’s the right one. But does living together provide such clarity?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the divorce rate of people who live together before marriage at 12 percent higher than those who didn’t cohabitate before marriage. And according to a study published in November 2008 by the sociologist Daniel Lichter of Cornell University, divorce rates for women who had lived with more than one man were twice as high as those who hadn’t.

What’s going on here? Schwartz has some theories. He feels that people who live together as a ‘test run’ might tend to be maximizers, people who want to be sure they’re getting ‘the best’ but then are never truly satisfied. . . . ‘Almost everybody would rather buy in a store that permits returns than in one that does not,’ he writes in The Paradox of Choice. ‘What we don’t realize is that the very option of being allowed to change our minds seems to increase the chances that we will change our minds. When we can change our minds about decisions, we are less satisfied with them.’ . . .

The longer you spend being indecisive—thinking that any given guy can be returned for another—the more likely it is that you’ll focus on his faults, and nobody will measure up. One guy might seem great, but compare him to another guy who’s smarter but more passive, and both choices start to look slightly less appealing. The first guy seems less smart, the second guy seems less proactive. It’s easy to choose between ‘pretty good’ and ‘completely wrong’; it’s crazy-making to constantly choose between two pretty goods. . . .

Schwartz’s point is that satisficers don’t end up with a sweater that’s less good than they should have; nor do they pick a guy who’s less good than they should have. They’re happy because they know that good enough is good enough. They realize that nothing is perfect in life—not jobs, not friends, not sweaters, and not spouses—so taking the best available option and appreciating it makes sense.”—Lori Gottlieb, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough (2010)