The Frisky: After writing this book, do you worry the guy you’ll end up marrying will be insulted that you see him as “Mr. Good Enough”?
LG: Well, I’m Miss Good Enough! The point is that we’re all Mr. and Ms. Good Enough, but once we find that person, that becomes Mr. and Ms. Right. That’s the thing — the person you choose to be with is your Mr. or Ms. Right. But we don’t give them a chance to become that. We just say, “Oh, he’s not good enough for me.” You know what? He has flaws? You have flaws.
And another thing about the Good Enough thing, a lot of us are always told by our friends, “You’re so great! You deserve the best!” We’re always kind of “yes”-womening our friends, meaning they say, “Don’t you think I could do better?” and you say, “Yes! Absolutely! You go for it!’ And the thing is, we’re not talking to them in a mature way sometimes. I think we want to be nice to our friends, so we get this false impression of what we’re supposed to be looking for.
The dating coach said to me, “I want you to write down all the things somebody would have to put up with to be with you.” I think a lot of us think — which is natural — that some of our flaws are quirky and cute and endearing and someone’s going to love us so much that they’re going to find these things quirky and cute and endearing. In reality, no, they’re going to find them annoying, but they’re going to love you so much that they’re going to accept you with these annoying traits. It’s not that they’re going to say, “Oh, [you did that annoying thing] because you’re so cute and quirky!” They’re going to say, “It’s really annoying you do this, but I don’t care because the whole package is what I want.” Women, on the other hand, think, “I’m compromising because he’s got this thing I don’t like.”
We’re Ms. Good Enough. They’re Mr. Good Enough. But we become Mr. and Ms. Right when we find the right person.
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