Tag Archives: settling

20 Percent Of You Are In Love With Someone Else

Carli Alexa BlauJuly 20, 2010 //

Last night I watched the movie “Vicki Cristina Barcelona” and, like all movies, it got me thinking. If you haven’t seen it, here’s the synopsis: two best friends go to Barcelona for the summer, one of whom is Cristina, a free spirited, open-minded woman looking not for love but adventure. She only knows what she doesn’t want in a man, rather than what she does want. Vicki, on the other hand, is a practical woman with her whole life planned out. She is engaged to an average guy who makes her feel safe.

In the movie, Vicki falls in love with a man other than her fiance, and realizes that maybe she settled for less than she actually wanted. When one of the characters in the movie says, “Only unfulfilled love can be romantic,” I immediately wondered about the validity of that sentiment, especially in regards to Vicky’s situation. How many people in this world are in a relationship with one person but are actually in love with someone else? Keep reading »

To Settle Or Not To Settle?

Natalie KrinskyMarch 2, 2010 //

There is that scene in Bridget Jones’ Diary, where, Bridge (as she’s called) lies on her couch, pajama-clad, bottle of vodka clutched tightly in hand, bemoaning the fate of an untimely death for a single person. She worries that if she were to die, alone in her apartment, it is likely that someone would find her decomposing body three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian.

I too fear the fate of an untimely “single” death. I imagine my distraught mother, overcome with grief, forced to go through my things. Her sadness only magnified as she discovers the true, mind-blowing total of my credit card debt, and then the small stash of “emergency” illicit prescription drugs in my bedside table. I can see her coming to the realization that I’m not the daughter she imagined, but her image of me will truly be shattered when she opens the drawer that I use to store both my vibrators and my financial statements. I can just see the horror pass over her face, as she realizes that her daughter was not only a bit too sexually adventurous, but also was unfamiliar with exactly what a 401K is. Keep reading »

Quote Of The Day: Amerie Breaks Down Why Women Settle And Men Don’t

Annika HarrisNovember 7, 2009 //

“Men rarely settle; they won’t wife up someone they don’t feel is worthy of them. A woman can persistently chase a man, and he may sleep with her, but it’ll never make him love her. Yet a guy that a woman’s not interested in can hound her, and if he’s persistent enough, he’ll wear her down. Women are more malleable. Yet, we’re still the smarter sex. Men can’t handle the truth about women — that we can be as noncommittal, manipulative, and promiscuous as they are.”

— Amerie, whose fourth album In Love and War dropped this week, talks to Complex magazine about cheating and “wanting space.” [Complex.com] Keep reading »

Dating Don’ts: How NOT To Settle

Judy McGuireJune 18, 2009 //

When I questioned a friend about why she was marrying a guy whom she found only mildly attractive, didn’t enjoy having sex with and wasn’t in love with, she told me this: “Marriage isn’t about love, it’s about finding the person who gets on your nerves the least.”

I recall being both horrified and saddened by her cynicism. But as I pondered it further, I wondered if she might have a point. I was single at the time. A long-term relationship had gone bust a few years earlier and after a hyper-extended mourning period I’d been dating a seemingly non-stop parade of utterly unsuitable suitors. Keep reading »

Poll: Would You Throw Away Your First Love To See What’s Out There?

Carrie WasterlainMay 29, 2009 //

Would you throw away your first love to see what's out there?

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

Wendy AtterberryOctober 3, 2008 //

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… Keep reading »