When To “Satisfice” Yourself For The Sake Of Your Relationship

The other day I was reading an article about the 8 ways to trick your brain into spending less (sadly, booze didn’t make the list) and one of the tips was to “satisfice yourself.” Thinking that might require batteries or something, I sailed on over to Wikipedia for a definition and discovered that satisfice is basically a made up a word, blended from the words “satisfy” and “suffice.” The author of the article explained, “When you satisfice, you don’t let an impossible quest for the perfect option destroy your enjoyment of the merely OK.” Hmm, I thought, is that sort of like just accepting that your boyfriend prefers watching, like, 15 hours of baseball every week instead of “The Real Housewives of New York City” marathons?

To clarify, satisficing isn’t the same thing as settling. Settling is accepting the merely OK despite a very a real possibility of finding and achieving better. Satisficing is understanding when that possibility is pretty much, well, nil…like meeting a straight guy who’d rather watch reality TV than sports. After the jump, ten other scenarios when you just have to satisfice for the sake of your relationship and dating life because your quest is pretty impossible…

1. You want to find a guy who likes talking about his feelings as much as you do.
2. Your boyfriend leaves gobs of toothpaste in the sink every morning and farts too much.
3. You wish your booty call would take you out once in a while instead of just texting you after midnight.
4. You want your ex back — the one who broke your heart and then married Scarlett Johansson.
5. You wish your boyfriend never fantasized about humping other women.
6. Or squeezing their boobs.
7. You wish you could find a guy who loves your cats as much as you do.
8. And also Ani DiFranco. And shopping for new clothes.
9. You want a guy who’s eager to define your new relationship.
10. And you wish you could trade in your perfectly nice boyfriend for the super hot (and gay) Neil Patrick Harris.