Marriage DOES mean settling for less. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. A better way of interpreting this phrase is 'compromise'. After all, you really have to compromise in any long term relationship, and that means re-evaluating your self, being less selfish and more giving. Inevitably, this may seem like settling for less, if you think of the idealistic view of marriage and relationships you had as you were younger.

However, you also get back what you give. The more you compromise, the more your partner will too, and the support and love you get from this should make up for your sacrifice.

There is another way of looking at it. After observing my friends marriages, the more I am convinced that most of them have 'settled' just so they could be married. Most of them are NOT madly in love with their partners, but they want children and a family, and are willing to settle to get this. I know one friend who married a 'boy' ten years younger then herself, because she was desperate to have a baby, even though the signs did not look good about his commitment levels. Even before marriage, she complained about him not giving her enough emotional support, of not having any patience and being the typical stereotypical selfish young man in his twenties. Anyone else can see a mile off that he is unsuitable husband material, but she is blinded to his faults because she can't find anyone else and thinks her biological clock is ticking.

Somebody else I know married her husband in her early twenties after her mothers death, and acknowledged that she needed security, which is why she got married. They were thrown together in college and it just sort of happened is how she put it.

The ones who didn't settle and married because they were 'in love', are the couples I know who are mostly divorced or separated. This may be because they had rose tinted glasses when they married and were on a high of being in love which blinds people to their partners faults. When reality strikes, as it inevitably does, the balloon deflates pretty quickly, and they compare the feeling they had when they were madly in love, with the realism they have now, and they can't accept and adjust to it. They want to get back the intoxicating feeling they had when they were in love, which just doesn't compare with humdrum reality, and so go searching elsewhere for love, never mind the fact that in a long term relationship it is impossible to maintain this romantic high. All relationships change and evolve. Having children most definitely is a balloon buster.

At the end of the day, most of us settle, because that is reality, but I guess most women aspire to the romantic ideal secretly, which is why we read romantic novels and watch chick flicks

Learn more about this author, Sameena Khanum.
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