I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Friday Flash, I share an epiphany or aha moment from the past week.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the dating advice “don’t settle!” While I think it’s important that people seek relationships and partners that provide a base level of satisfaction, I also see this advice as arising from the same restless craving for more that American culture inculcates in us.
Whatever you have, it’s easy to feel like it’s not enough. With social media feeds, advertising, and news about billionaires almost impossible to avoid, you can’t help but be exposed to images and offerings and possibilities that make your own situation look puny and dissatisfying by comparison.
Online dating makes it seem like with enough time, enough messages, enough first meetups, enough tries at relationships you can eventually get to a person and relationship in which you don’t feel like you’re settling. That is the “numbers game” idea of dating. Just rack up more and more tries and eventually you’ll find “your person,” the person you don’t have to settle for.1
I have a friend who is dating a man she likes very much. They have good conversation and their sex life is satisfying. But she doesn’t find her boyfriend attractive. He has a beer belly she doesn’t like and he’s bald. He’s not very tall. They are compatible in terms of their values, the activities they like to spend time doing, their educational level, and their family commitments.
But she feels like she’s settling. She wants someone who gives her butterflies when he looks at her. She wants to feel so attracted to him that when she sees him she can’t keep her hands off of him.
So, reader, should she settle for this pretty good but not great situation?
Where does a feeling of enoughness come from? I feel entirely satisfied with my boyfriend Ray and my relationship with him. I am very attracted to him along all dimensions I could conceive of. He isn’t perfect — and neither am I — but I don’t ever think I am just settling for him.
Is this because I’ve found the right situation? Or have I been open enough to make it the right situation?
Maybe it’s the measuring stick I’m using.
I’ve taught my children the three-out-of-ten rule I use to decide if I need to change up anything in my life. For each area of my life (my living situation, my health, my career, my family relationships, etc), I rate whether it is at least a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is terrible, and ten is the best it could conceivably be.
Because life is a mix of good, bad, and neutral, I figure if anything in my life is at least 30% good then it is good enough for me — it is at least as good as expected (almost one-third good!) and maybe better. In fact, it is something to celebrate, especially if it is higher than a three out of ten.
If something is less than a three out of ten, time to change it.
I’d rank my current relationship easily a seven out of ten, maybe higher. This is really amazing considering none of the relationships I was in before since my divorce rated even a three out of ten (hence why I left them).
I rate my house a seven out of ten, or maybe six, because it is too gigantic for me and the mortgage is too big and I got into it with one of my neighbors over trash. I think my current career (indie writer and publisher) is a six out of ten. It would be an eight or nine out of ten if I actually made any money at it!2 Going back to corporate data science work would be one or two out of ten — not going to do that.
I am hesitant to share this rule as it is somewhat reckful, in the sense of being calculating and evaluative. It calls for you to assign one numeric rating to complicated situations in your life. It creates a crude cutoff — three out of ten or better? You’re good. Less than three out of ten? Make some changes.
What’s reckless about it is how low it sets the bar, busting you out of the optimizing mindset. You’re not going for the best; you’re going for merely adequate or maybe even not-entirely terrible. I’ve always told my kids, “lower your expectations.” As mini-mes, they expect incredible outcomes from their life: the best learning, the best career, the best partner, the best stuff, the best dogs and cats (well, at least we got that last one covered!) But kids, life doesn’t hand out the best all the time!
Life hands out the bad, the good, the neutral in roughly equal measure. Yes, I was blessed with strong family relationships, three compassionate and responsible children, and the most adorable and loving dogs and cats ever. But I didn’t achieve what I had hoped to in my technology career or as a writer (not yet anyway) and I made a lot of poor financial decisions that left me with less money than I feel like I should have given my education level and the fact I worked in technology for most of my career. Also, I waxed my eyebrows into oblivion in the nineties, I created a terrible drinking habit as a teenager that stays with me today, and my belly is menopause flabby. I have a lot of good to celebrate, plenty of neutrality to tolerate, and some bad too, just like everyone.
Coming back around to dating and romance and long-term partnerships: should you settle? Should my friend settle for her balding, short, dad-bod-rocking man who sparkles in conversation and in bed? My rule would be this: is your current partner and relationship at least a three out of ten or better? Then celebrate it. You’re not settling. You’ve hit a jackpot of a kind: a relationship better than you’d randomly expect it to be. If it rates anything below a three, then get out. Don’t settle for that. You can do better!