Warning: Contents May Settle
I have this really convoluted network of friends and acquaintances that has, from time to time, circled back upon itself in any number of surprising ways. Maybe it’s because I’ve had so many jobs, or because Boston is just such a small and insular community, but it always ends up that most of the people I know know people who know all of the other people I know. If you know what I mean. It’s kind of nice, in a way, because it reinforces my perpetual delusion that I am, in fact, the Center of the Universe, and also because it ensures that if I go to a party I’ll always know at least one person there.
Anyway, I once made a friend in an adult education class who subsequently introduced me to several of her friends. One of her friends was a guy by the name of Darren Wheeler, but, because he thought that the name “Darren” made him sound like a dork (which he actually kind of was), he decided that he would be much cooler if everyone just called him “Wheels.” So, after a while that was how he became known around town - to the extent that I knew him for two years before I realized he even had a full name.
As it happened, Wheels lived up to his nickname quite admirably, becoming a perpetual third wheel (and then eventually the fifth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh wheel as more and more friends paired off and got married). Unlike me (I was in pretty much the same boat at that point), he was utterly miserable with his status and thus went about pestering all of his female friends to set him up with their other female friends. For a while, all he really got out of their efforts were a bunch of new female friends who liked him, but “not in that way,” but eventually lightning struck when our mutual friend Karen introduced him to my co-worker Trish. Trish was in kind of the same odd-wheel-out position, equally miserable and quite desperate for marriage, and, with that tiny bit in common, the two of them skipped off, hand in hand, down the rosy road to romance.
They kind of dropped out of sight for a while, but eventually Karen and I were able to make plans to get together with the two of them for dinner. We all met at a nice restaurant on Newbury Street, where we dined on Caesar salad, filet mignon, two bottles of wine, and one crème brulee with four spoons.
Then the check arrived.
The tab came to an even $200. By our calculations, since we had all had exactly the same meal, that came to $50 per person, plus an extra $10 each for the tip (I’m a huge proponent of the 20% tip, first because I waitressed all through college and I know what a shit job it is, and second because the math is so much easier that way). Karen and I each happily handed over our $60 in cash to Wheels, who had decided to put the whole thing on his credit card.
Here’s what happened next. Wheels, who had been borderline-rude to the waiter all evening, finally jumped the barbed-wire fence into the Republic of Raging Asshole and proclaimed loudly - in front of the entire restaurant - that the service really hadn’t met his discerning standards. He decided that our poor waiter - who had retreated, shamefaced, to the comforting anonymity of the bussing station - only merited a 10% tip. So, instead of giving him the expected $40. Wheels only gave him $20 (don’t worry; we made up the rest when he wasn‘t looking). But here’s the rub - he didn’t give Karen and me our $10 back! He pocketed the difference.
So there was Trish, sitting in utter mortification next to a guy who had not only been exposed to all and sundry as a shitty tipper, but who also had no qualms about ripping off her friends for a miserly $10 without a second thought. She looked at us, no doubt mentally calculating the odds of ever getting this close to the altar again, then shrugged helplessly and married the Raging Asshole two months later.
And that, my friends, is what is known as Settling.
The world is full of people who have settled, and there’s really nothing wrong with the idea in and of itself. I can certainly understand how you would get so lonely, so desperate, and so isolated in a world that seems it was made for couples, that you get to the point where you just throw your hands up and marry the next person who comes your way. I know plenty of women who set arbitrary deadlines for themselves, as in “I will be married by the time I am 35 no matter what!” and, as the deadline approaches, fly into a panic and suddenly decide that that Zima-swilling, bong-toting, tie-dyed Rastafarian guy they had the fling with three years ago was really a diamond in the rough and then drag me off on a desperate quest through the back streets of Chelsea and the crack alleys of Somerville to try to find him and rekindle the flame before it‘s Too Late.
What’s wrong with settling is not the fact that you settle. It’s the fact that you try to justify settling by insisting that you haven’t settled.
I hear it all the time (and not just from women, by the by - my male friends are just as bad, if not worse):
“I realized that my expectations were just too unrealistic. You really don‘t have to have both front teeth to be attractive.”
“She was right under my nose the whole time, except for the six times she was in rehab, but I was just too shallow too see it.”
“My mother was right - I’ve been way too picky. Loansharking is a fine profession and I‘ve just been a white collar snob.”
We all have our ideals, and they may or may not be reasonable, but there’s always something kind of sad about giving up on a dream, however unrealistic that dream may have been. What is sadder is when you sacrifice your ideal because of external pressure - whether it’s from your parents, your friends, society, or the simple need to have a warm body - any warm body - next to you at social functions.
So, hey, if you’re lonely and you feel like that’s the only path you have left, hop on and go at it. Just don’t try to drag everyone else down with you. Don’t lecture me about my own expectations being shallow and unrealistic. Don’t set yourself up as a shining example of pragmatism and try to insist that this was the life you wanted all along. Because, baby, you might as well admit it - you’ve given up.
And I’m not ready to do that yet.
To me, marriage is a serious business. It’s forever. Why shouldn’t I be picky? This is the rest of my life we‘re talking about, people! And at this point, I have garnered enough self-knowledge to be absolutely, rock-solid certain that your little “quirks” that merely annoy me today will drive me to murderous distraction in five, ten, or fifty years. So believe me, I’m doing myself - and you - a big favor by admitting it now and cutting you loose to go annoy someone else.
Deep down, I really do believe that there is someone for everyone out there. Maybe even more than one person. That being said, I don‘t necessarily believe that I‘ll ever actually find any of them. It takes a daunting combination of courage, perceptiveness, and sheer dumb luck to actually stumble upon The One, and to recognize him when you finally do. So, for all I know, I may very well become a rambling old Cat Lady, living in a basement apartment next to a church and shuffling across the Common every Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. to catch a solitary Early Bird Special at the Tremont Café.
But I’m holding fast anyway.
Why?
Because for every Trish and Wheels, there are ten Cathy and Owens. Ordinary, real-life people with great marriages, who didn’t settle, who didn’t jump at the first tick of the biological clock, and who love their partners not in spite of their flaws, but because those very flaws are what makes them who they are and are what makes the two of them fit together in that intangible, indescribable way that is so perfect and so right that it makes you happy just to be in the same room with them.
And that, my friends, is what I call not settling.
I’ll settle for that.
10:42:03 AM 
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