Depending on the singles in your orbit your perspective will change but I assure you there are many men and women with ridiculous expectations that won't be met

Anonymous wrote:They get married when they'd rather not, but it's not like the woman is not good enough. It's the other way around I'd say.

I agree. You may be looking from the outside of their relationship and think he settled, but he may have his own checklist that the woman met and more that he didn’t even realize he wanted.

They get married when they'd rather not, but it's not like the woman is not good enough. It's the other way around I'd say.

I have four married brothers and I know none of them settled and I’m sure my husband didn’t settle. My husband and my brothers were all smart, successful and ambitious in their 20s and, though I may be biased, good looking and great guys. Their spouses are all the same. I think there are biological reasons why women may settle more than men.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My nephew probably will. He wants a woman who looks like a model, earns at least $150/year, and will have dinner ready when he gets home every night. Dont't think that person exists.

That exists, but they don’t want your nephew.

The number of models who make $150k a year and also cook every night by age 30 are 0.0001 percent of the population. He's welcome to set these standards but his chances are about the same.

Lol I think she already married John Legend.

Anonymous wrote:Hell no. Men can have babies forever.

I never see men settle-the exception are cultural/religious where the parent is putting tremendous pressure on the son—but most don’t care.

They can have babies for longer but the number of fertile women who want to have babies with some old man is small and getting smaller. Really rich guys will always be able to find someone willing to sign up for that chore in order to get a big payoff but otherwise -- good luck. Women can have babies on their own now if they want.

Also for most men there are many reasons to marry someone in your general age group before the typical fertility window closes for women -- emotional, social, status. Just like for women, marriage for men operates like a seal of approval from society -- this one is good enough to pass on his genes. You can wait until your 50s or 60s to try and get that approval but you do so at your own risk and you also wind up being "the old dad" and the "old DH" and except in a few very narrow circles (again: very rich ones) this is status-lowering.

So men make their compromises too. Everyone is on the clock to some degree or another.

The vast majority of married people "settle" in the sense that they accept at least some qualities in a partner that are not ideal. Because humans aren't robots and most humans are not actually ideal. Some might be a little more ideal than others but it's sometimes hard to tell -- people tend to focus more on physical qualities and attraction early on and that can obscure a broad variety of "not ideal" qualities that you might only discover later.

For many couples the negative qualities only emerge after kids which is really tricky. You might think you've found the perfect mate and then you have kids and your priorities change but their's don't. And kids is a major trigger but there are many others -- people change over time and also stuff that didn't seem like a big deal when you were young can become a much bigger deal in middle age.

So it's like everyone settles to some degree but also it's just that you are constantly discovering more about your partner (in some cases at the exact same time they are discovering things about themselves) and some of those surprises are not great.

It's all guesswork combined with dedication and figuring out what your limits are and then adjusting as life goes on.

Anyone who tells you that they knew everything they needed to know about their partner before they married and nothing ever changed or surprised them is lying. It's more likely that people like this made some good choices but also got lucky in those choices panning out. It's like picking stocks -- some people are better at it than others but no one has a crystal ball and even the best picker can get unlucky.

Anonymous wrote:My nephew probably will. He wants a woman who looks like a model, earns at least $150/year, and will have dinner ready when he gets home every night. Dont't think that person exists.

Good luck with that, dude.

Hell no. Men can have babies forever.

I never see men settle-the exception are cultural/religious where the parent is putting tremendous pressure on the son—but most don’t care.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My nephew probably will. He wants a woman who looks like a model, earns at least $150/year, and will have dinner ready when he gets home every night. Dont't think that person exists.

That exists, but they don’t want your nephew.

The number of models who make $150k a year and also cook every night by age 30 are 0.0001 percent of the population. He's welcome to set these standards but his chances are about the same.

Anonymous wrote:My nephew probably will. He wants a woman who looks like a model, earns at least $150/year, and will have dinner ready when he gets home every night. Dont't think that person exists.

That exists, but they don’t want your nephew.

Men don’t settle, per se. Most men who have unreasonable expectations just stay single, and a large proportion of the male population is unmarriageable. Childlessness among men is on the rise. So if a man is partnered it’s a safe bet he didn’t settle.

My nephew probably will. He wants a woman who looks like a model, earns at least $150/year, and will have dinner ready when he gets home every night. Dont't think that person exists.

Most humans of both sexes are tolerant enough to compromise.

Only a rare few have personalities that cannot accept that: usually they are perfectionists/inflexible people, not necessarily wealthy and successful. But you do see a few of them on DCUM, of the successful career types who believe they are "worth" a certain quality of partner.

I really don't believe it's limited to one sex, OP.

Do you think men always settle and women don't?