Should You Settle? Tips on Choosing a Mate

A good man is hard to find. A good woman no less! Life is short, and once lived, it is over. To find one's soulmate, the person who will complete us and share our lives, is a dream many pursue. But what if the soulmate is not forth-coming. What if your suitor is "only an excellent person"? Should you settle?

I know of one woman, Aurora, I will call her, who was comely and bright and hoped for a happy future. She was diligent in her studies at university, and equally diligent in her pursuit of Romance. There were two men in particular who caught her attention, Tom and Dick. And there was one man who loved her deeply, Harry.

Now Tom was very tall and athletic, and he could trip the light fantastic. They shared many an intimate moment. Dick, on the other hand, was studious and quiet, but his staid manner hid a virile and manly nature, and he brought Aurora to paroxysms of passion.

And what of Harry? Harry loved her. He was neither tall nor short. He was smart, but not a brilliant scholar. He was an outdoorsman, but not an athlete. He liked to cook Aurora sumptous meals. She enjoyed his company, but she felt no passion for Harry,

Now some people say that love is not important. For instance, fellow hubber DawnM gives this advice: friendship, mutual respect, shared values and physical attraction are the bedrock of a good marriage. If they are present, love will come. Read her hub, "What a good wife does for her husband" and then come back and hear what happened to Aurora.

Now during their junior year, Harry proposed to Aurora. He told her of his plans for the future, where they would live, how they would work together, and how he hoped to have a family, not too big, but neither too small. Three children would be perfect.

Aurora smiled, and said kindly: "Harry, that's so sweet. You know I love you as a friend. But I am not in love with you. So let's just be friends."

And she went off to have a date with Tom. But Harry smiled to himself and said: "I can wait."

That month, Tom announced his engagement to Felicity, and nobody could have been more surprised than Aurora. It hit her hard, and even the second proposal from Harry did not cheer her up, and she wasn't quite as gracious when she turned him down. Harry was not flustered. "I can wait," he said.

Aurora went off to have a date with Dick, and in his passionate embrace, she forgot all about Tom.

It was not until the week of graduation that Dick announced his engagement to Lucretia. Aurora was devastated. She cried and cried and cried, until her eyes were red and her voice was sore, and all hope of happiness had flown.

That's when Harry came by, bearing flowers. Harry knew the language of flowers. He brought red roses, which signify true love. "Will you marry me?" he asked, getting down on one knee.

"No," Aurora croaked. "Get out of here! I don't love you! Go away!"

Harry was not worried. "I can wait," he said.

In ancient times, it was understood that the purpose of marriage was procreation, and that society needed healthy children. For this reason, the best, most virile, the most intelligent, and possibly the kindest men were awarded more than one woman, so that their seed would multiply and fill the earth. Meanwhile, lesser men got no woman at all. But this was later found to be quite undemocratic, and unfair to the average man, and so in Rome, monogamy was the rule of the day. When the Romans took up Christianity as their empire was crumbling about them, Christianity took up monogamy. Up until that point, the Bible was in favor of polygamy, so that every woman, and not just the best, could have her pick of a really good man. In those days, and I quote, "seven women would hold on to the skirts of one man, saying our clothes we will wear and our food we will eat, only give us your name and take away our shame."

Aurora went home to her mother and told her everything that had happened. And Aurora's mother said: "You are so like your Aunt Bitty. She fancied herself the belle of the ball, and she would marry no one but someone she loved. But no one she loved loved her back. And no one who loved her took her fancy. And look at her now, an old woman of fifty, and never been kissed."

Aurora was confused by the reference to kissing, but then she realized that her mother came from a very repressed generation, so when she said "never been kissed", she meant something else entirely.

At graduation, Aurora sought Harry out. She tried to hint to him that she had changed her mind, but he did not seem to understand. "Changed your mind?" Harry asked. "What about?"

"Well, about marrying you, of course."

Harry acted rather stupid. "Who said anything about marrying me?"

"You did."

"Well, it's entirely slipped my mind," said Harry.

Aurora was very angry. Her face turned scarlet. "Harry, you do want to marry me!!" she cried.

"No, my dear, I think that you should reverse the order of the 'do' and the 'you', if you mean to ask me properly. Or perhaps you should say 'will you marry me'."

And that's how Aurora ended proposing to Harry. "Will you marry me, Harry?"

"I'm so shocked," said Harry. "I thought you didn't love me."

"Well, I don't," Aurora muttered miserably. "There's just nobody else who loves me."

"I told you I could wait," Harry said triumphantly. He didn't care if she loved him. The only thing that mattered to him was that he loved her.

Recently, Aurora and Harry celebrated their twentieth wedding anniversary. I was there. Harry made a toast. "After twenty years of marriage and three children, we are so very lucky!" He looked at Aurora with love in his eyes. "Aren't we, dear?"

Aurora, who was distracted because Tom and Felicity and Dick and Lucretia were there, took a second longer to answer than seemed right. "Yes, dear," she said, "we are very lucky." But I looked in her eyes, and she had that pained expression like that of a deer in the headlights.

What do you think? Should Aurora have settled?

Copyright 2010 Medora Trevilian

All rights reserved.