The Most Depressing Article Ever

StackingPennies left me a comment on my post earlier today where I rambled on and on about making babies and marriage and such. While most of my peers seem to not share in hearing the baby-making clock, it seems many are thinking more about marriage (soon!) than popping out the kidlets.

I wanted to clarify a few things about the other entry first... Kacie mentioned something about not taking hormonal bcp's to make me more fertile. To sum up why that won't work -- I don't get my period ever unless I'm on BCPs. To make me ovulate will require expensive hormone injections and such. So for me, making a baby will be a large expense. There's nothing much I can do about that.

Now, onto the real reason I'm writing another entry this evening...

StackingPennies posted a link to an article in The Atlantic titled "Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough!"

(Gosh, if Pennies thought my noting that I'm "deprecating into womanhood" was depressing, I'm not so sure how s/he felt about this article.)

The author, a single mother in her late 30s, uses four pages to convince her reader that settling, especially at such an old age, is the better thing to do than to live alone forever. Forget love or attraction, really. A marriage is a business agreement. Find someone you can stand, who maybe you enjoy spending time with, and that's the best you can ask for, especially when you've passed your prime.

I'm glad that at 24, I've found a guy who I love, and as long as things continue to work out, I won't have to deal with settling. One thing that I applaud myself for is my ability to be rational about love. I don't expect "Mr. Right" to never veer to have his, uh, Mr. Left moments. There are plenty things that bug me about my boyfriend, but ultimately I feel comfortable with him. I'm attracted to him. And I'm head over heals in love with him.

But not to the point of being so romantically in love that I can't see how our relationship would develop as we moved on to sharing our lives together. There are things that would be a bit of a struggle... dealing with compromising on finances... how to raise the children (I'd want to shelter them a bit more than he would). But in the end, I feel like we'd get along just fine. My biggest concern is what happens if he passes away first. I know, morbid thought, but if that's my biggest concern than I'd say this is a pretty darned good relationship.

I don't think people should ever "settle," but I do think both men and women should have realistic expectations of what love is. So many people want someone to fit this mold they've invented of their soul mate. That doesn't exist. Or maybe it seems like it does, but then you realize he leaves the toilet seat up.

My life is currently fantastic because I've found the guy I want to spend the rest of my life with. We could be rich, we could be poor. We could have 10 children or none. But as long as I have him there beside me through it all, I know I'll be fine.

On the other hand, it's not all that healthy to put that much weight on one relationship. My relationship experience isn't all that varied, yet I think I know what I'm looking for. I've been on a lot of first dates, and have been in a few LTRs. I think that, while love at first sight is a joke, there is a such truth to knowing a year or so into a relationship if it's meant to be.

Maybe I'll have to settle with everything else in my life, but not love. That's one thing I refuse to settle for. Thanks to luck, fate, or whatever brought me to California and helped me meet my boyfriend, I won't have to