Book Review: Marry Him: The Case For Settling For Mr. Good Enough

            I have just finished reading the book Marry Him: The Case for Settling For Mr. Good Enough By: Lori Gottlieb. I loved this book! It had a lot of personal experiences that were analyzed and help you realize what might help you when you are looking for the person you want to marry. There was also a fair amount of research that allowed for the book to still be enjoyable and not feel like you were reading a text book, but also to make the book seem more real and believable. The author sets up the book very well. The book consists of five parts and in each part you can clearly find a subject that will be of interest to you if you just have time to thumb through the book. The beginning of this book is what really ties you in. It starts with a story about a husband store. As you go up each level, the husbands on the next level up will have gained another desirable quality. There are 6 floors in the store and when the woman gets to level five the husband she could choose are men who have good jobs, love kids, are extremely handsome, help equally with the housework, and have a great sense of humor. The trick to this store is you can only move up in floors and you may only enter the store once. So the woman as she reached this floor she was tempted to stay because she has found exactly what she was looking for, but something leads her to the last floor. On the last floor there are no men. This story helps begin the whole basis of the book. Women can sometimes be impossible to please. So I want to share my favorite part from each section of the book.

Part One: How Did We Get Here?

            In this part of the book the author does some social research between a group of five twenty-something year olds, and a group of five women in their thirties and forties. What she finds is that the 20 year olds are very picky in the kind of men they date. They basically throw away really amazing guys because they don’t meet one requirement on their list. Well it turns out that is what these women in their 30’s and 40’s had done and now they would give anything to be back with the guy who was too optimistic, or wasn’t exciting enough, or who didn’t give the “right kind of flowers”, or who was going bald.

Part Two: From Fantasy To Reality

“Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces”-Sigmund Freud

            *Learn to be happily realistic about the person you want to marry.

*The M&M test: When you ask people why they like M&M’s they can tell you what they like but not necessarily why. How does this relate to dating? Our must haves and deal-breakers are the “what” when they should be the “why.” We need to really take a closer look and decide what is really important to us.

*”You end up with the type of woman today who sees herself as too good for an ordinary relationship”-Dr. Broder (pg. 131)

Part Three: Making Smarter Choices

*”First Impressions are not a strong predictor of marital success.”- Scott Haltzman (pg. 195) We need to make smarter choices and not just get rid of someone after the first date because they ate shrimp and you hate shrimp. Give it some time and you might just find they are an amazing person, maybe even the one for you!

Part Four: What Really Matters

*I love this section because it focused on wants vs. needs and it gave some great examples! Here they are:

            *You want someone creative. You need someone you can trust.

*You want someone who shares your love of jazz. You need someone who appreciates some of your interests.

* You want someone who is athletic and physically active. You need someone who accepts you at your worst. (Gottlieb, pg 221).

Part Five: Putting it All Together

“It is not lack of love but lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”-Friedrich Nietzsche

*Cooperative teamwork was the definition of a good marriage, but now the focus has shifted to personal satisfaction through the marital relationship itself.”-Paul Amato (Gotlieb, pg. 277) As we learn to make our marriage work and work on having satisfaction as a couple, the marriage will stay strong and so will the relationship.

I love this book and I recommend that you all read it! Hopefully I didn’t give away too much, but just enough to get you interested. Happy Reading!