Ladies: Please, Just Settle
A new study alleges that men produce a lot of sperm because it's so hard to knock a woman up, Slate reports. Given the fact that they're always cheating, as well as having babies that aren't Really Yours, you cuckhold. On the flip side, Lori Gottlieb advises The Atlantic's female readers to, "Settle! That's right... Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go." You know, how Rachel should have settled for Barry on Friends, she points out. Wait, what?
Does this writer own a TV? Because Rachel wouldn't have settled for Barry—he was kind of a lying jerk. Remember?
Well, whatever. On the eve of Valentine's Day, we leave you with this:
What I didn't realize when I decided, in my 30s, to break up with boyfriends I might otherwise have ended up marrying, is that while settling seems like an enormous act of resignation when you're looking at it from the vantage point of a single person, once you take the plunge and do it, you'll probably be relatively content... I didn't fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn't necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you're married, it's not about whom you want to go on vacation with; it's about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isn't a passion-fest; it's more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business.