So much for my happy ending?

My friend and loyal reader Patricia and I have had this one conversation over and over again.

The gist of it is: The jobs you have in your 20s are kinda disappointing. And the men are worse.

That's not to say that either are necessarily bad. Though there are plenty of bad guys out there, and I know my fair share. But neither are what we wanted and expected during the dreamy days of undergrad.

Had you asked Patty or I where we expected to be now - 3 years after graduation - in May 2005, we both would have had these grandiose plans for our careers and love lives and lives in general. If you asked me now to put any sort of prediction on the next 3 years, my view is much tamer. I won't be running anything. I'll probably still be single. Bills will come every month. I'll pay them and try to extract some fabulosity from what's left.

Bleak, right?

So it's interesting that in a recent issue of The Atlantic Monthly, the topic of "settling" is brought up and recommended. The author says:

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year. (It’s hard to maintain that level of zing when the conversation morphs into discussions about who’s changing the diapers or balancing the checkbook.)

Obviously, I wasn’t always an advocate of settling. In fact, it took not settling to make me realize that settling is the better option, and even though settling is a rampant phenomenon, talking about it in a positive light makes people profoundly uncomfortable. Whenever I make the case for settling, people look at me with creased brows of disapproval or frowns of disappointment, the way a child might look at an older sibling who just informed her that Jerry’s Kids aren’t going to walk, even if you send them money. It’s not only politically incorrect to get behind settling, it’s downright un-American. Our culture tells us to keep our eyes on the prize (while our mothers, who know better, tell us not to be so picky), and the theme of holding out for true love (whatever that is—look at the divorce rate) permeates our collective mentality.

Even situation comedies, starting in the 1970s with The Mary Tyler Moore Show and going all the way to Friends, feature endearing single women in the dating trenches, and there’s supposed to be something romantic and even heroic about their search for true love. Of course, the crucial difference is that, whereas the earlier series begins after Mary has been jilted by her fiancé, the more modern-day Friends opens as Rachel Green leaves her nice-guy orthodontist fiancé at the altar simply because she isn’t feeling it. But either way, in episode after episode, as both women continue to be unlucky in love, settling starts to look pretty darn appealing. Mary is supposed to be contentedly independent and fulfilled by her newsroom family, but in fact her life seems lonely. Are we to assume that at the end of the series, Mary, by then in her late 30s, found her soul mate after the lights in the newsroom went out and her work family was disbanded? If her experience was anything like mine or that of my single friends, it’s unlikely.

And while Rachel and her supposed soul mate, Ross, finally get together (for the umpteenth time) in the finale of Friends, do we feel confident that she’ll be happier with Ross than she would have been had she settled down with Barry, the orthodontist, 10 years earlier? She and Ross have passion but have never had long-term stability, and the fireworks she experiences with him but not with Barry might actually turn out to be a liability, given how many times their relationship has already gone up in flames. It’s equally questionable whether Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw, who cheated on her kindhearted and generous boyfriend, Aidan, only to end up with the more exciting but self-absorbed Mr. Big, will be better off in the framework of marriage and family. (Some time after the breakup, when Carrie ran into Aidan on the street, he was carrying his infant in a Baby Björn. Can anyone imagine Mr. Big walking around with a Björn?)

When we’re holding out for deep romantic love, we have the fantasy that this level of passionate intensity will make us happier. But marrying Mr. Good Enough might be an equally viable option, especially if you’re looking for a stable, reliable life companion. Madame Bovary might not see it that way, but if she’d remained single, I’ll bet she would have been even more depressed than she was while living with her tedious but caring husband.

I don't know what's more depressing to read - that passage or any of the multitudes of statistics on how I'm going to be a single, lonely, baren, old black woman simply because I'm educated and employed.

All this came up today cause I recently went on a bland date. Bland like butter pecan, not like vanilla. There's the potential for more excitement, but generally safe and predictable. Now, the me before reading this bleak article would have probably ended it after the first phone call. The me after reading this article thinks bland could be good.

But the idea of giving up the idea of happily ever after just feels wrong. Patty and I weren't raised that way. We were raised to believe that having it all was possible. That's what the world told us. So now, it is coming as quite a shock that the world doesn't want to deliver on that promise.

Somehow, I think it's going to take more than an article to shake our deep-seated beliefs in happily ever after. I anticipate that she and I will have that conversation many many many many more times.