THERE'S A REASON ARRANGED MARRIAGES WORK:

Home Alone: a review of MARRY HIM: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough By Lori Gottlieb (AMY FINNERTY, 2/14/10, NY Times Magazine)

While many books about relationships flatter women and promote strategies to attract elusive men — don’t sleep with him, let him “chase you till you catch him” — Gottlieb asks readers to reconsider the less-than-perfect men who are available to them, and to do so while still young enough to close the deal.

Like many of us, Gottlieb went shopping with a mental checklist of attributes for her fantasy husband. Believing that the One was at large, she squandered opportunities with seemingly flawed, flesh-and-blood men.

Expanding on a provocative article she wrote for The Atlantic Monthly in 2008, and interviewing, among many others, therapists, members of the clergy, and both single and married people, Gottlieb makes a case that many women today end up alone because they hold men to insanely high standards. The feminist ideal of having it all, on our own terms, she argues, “is exactly how many of us empowered ourselves out of a good mate.”