Waiting for the perfect man? Mr Second Best is better than Mr Nobody... and I should know!

By Charlotte Metcalf
Updated: 03:19 EDT, 26 January 2010

Single, over 30, longing for a baby? A new book says stop waiting for the perfect man and marry the first half-decent one who'll have you. Too right! says CHARLOTTE METCALF.

One of my best single friends is witty, clever, rich, successful and bears more than a passing resemblance to Pamela Anderson.

Men tend to wilt in her presence or behave with inappropriate rashness. The world is her oyster - and yet what she wants more than anything is a baby.

Currently, she is trying to conceive with donor sperm. When I went to see her recently, she introduced me to her friend, Alana, who - as a single woman - was thinking of going down the same route, but dithering. Alana knew I'd had a baby late in life and, since she was hitting 40, was eager to meet me. 

Mr Second Best: By holding out for a romantic ideal after the age of 30, girls are throwing away their chances of a secure and fulfilling family life (Posed by models)

When she found out I was living with my baby's father, she looked miserable for a minute before saying, with admirable honesty: 'Oh, so you're OK then. I'm not sure if I can bear to do it alone.

'Ever since I was little I've dreamed of a happy marriage and a family. Facing up to having a child alone kills that dream, and I think I'm still mourning it.'

I thought of Alana when I read the vituperative, enraged reactions to Lori Gottlieb's new book, Marry Him: The Case For Settling For Mr Good Enough, which is published in Britain next week. 

Gottlieb - a writer and columnist - would say Alana could fulfil her dream, so long as she 'settled' for the next man that came along .. . even if he had halitosis or was rude to waiters. 

The thesis of Gottlieb's book is that by holding out for the romantic ideal, broadly known as Mr Right, after the age of 30, many of us girls are throwing away the opportunity of a secure and fulfilling family life - a life-affirming structure that will keep us happy, regardless of our husband's failings.

In her book, Gottlieb - a single mother who admits she wishes she had settled for any of the 'perfectly acceptable but uninspiring' men she rejected during her futile hunt for perfection - describes sitting in the park with a friend and their six-month-old babies, both conceived via donor sperm: 'Ah, this is the dream,' I said, and we nodded in silence for a minute, then burst out laughing.

'In some ways, I meant it: we'd both dreamed of motherhood, and here we were, picnicking in the park with our children. But it was also decidedly not the dream.

Storm: Lori Gottlieb has written a book, titled: 'Marry Him: The Case For Settling For Mr Good Enough'

'The dream, like that of our mothers and their mothers from time immemorial, was to fall in love, get married,and live happily ever after.

'Of course, we'd be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won't tell you it's a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment.

'Most likely, she'll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).'

Phew. No wonder Gottlieb has whipped up such a storm. Across the pond, the internet is buzzing - and most of the women giving their views aren't happy with the author's 'tell it like it is' approach.

'There's no way in hell you would get me to settle for less than the perfect man - not even at gunpoint', wrote one outraged woman. 'She needs a psychiatrist, pronto,' said another. You get the picture.

Social scientist Bella DePaulo, author of Singled Out and The Living Single blog on the internet, was incandescent with indignation. She called Gottlieb's 'husband-fixation' 'tragic' and described the comments the author made as 'nakedly and proudly regressive'.

So does Gottlieb know what she's talking about? She's based her book on her own experience and research conducted among 30-year- olds. Underlying the entire premise is her conviction that they all long for conventional family life.

She concludes: 'Oh, I know there are single 30-year-old women reading this right now who will say that the women I know aren't widely representative, that I've been co-opted by the cult of the feminist backlash, and basically, that I have no idea what I'm talking about.

'All I can say is that if you say you're not worried about finding the right man, either you're in denial or you're lying. In fact, take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you're not worried, because you'll see how silly your face looks when you're being disingenuous.'

My initial instinct was to laugh and wholeheartedly agree with Gottlieb's vociferous detractors. Decades of feminism have surely convinced us that we can do without conventional, male-dominated social structures? 

Dreaming of motherhood: Lori Gottlieb says that if you're not worried about finding the right man, either you're in denial or you're lying

It seems ludicrous that women should be exhorted to put up with, say, as Gottlieb suggests, a widower with nightmare children still grieving for his dead wife, just for the sake of simply being able to call yourself 'Mrs' and not 'Miss'.

Yet thinking about my generation, 20 years on from Gottlieb's anxious 30-year-olds, I wonder, to my consternation, if she has a point.

Before I am labelled as regressive, too, I'm not talking about my friends who are perfectly content, having chosen to live single, child-free lives. I am talking about those who so desperately wanted marriage and children - but missed out.

Last year I went to a big 50th birthday party. Our host, happily married for more than two decades with a brood of children almost grown, made a speech in which he praised his wife's virtues and revelled (somewhat smugly) in his happiness and good fortune. 

As he talked, I happened to glance over at his ex-girlfriend. A beautiful, talented woman with a lust for travel, she had broken off her relationship with our host years ago to pursue other excitements.

Decades on, she is still unmarried without children - and not by choice.

Her smile was fixed as she listened. So should she have 'settled' all those years ago for a man who could have provided her with all those things she didn't even know she wanted then? Is it even possible for today's women, so used to controlling their lives, to 'sell their soul' to someone who really doesn't do it for them? Can we really do as Gottlieb urges?

Well, dare I say it: 'Yes we can!' Before you shriek in horrified protest, let's first dissect this idea of 'settling'.

During an interview about her new book describing her love affair with Harold Pinter, Lady Antonia Fraser coyly confided that he had sent her reams of love poems. I defy any woman who was listening not to have had a momentary pang of extreme envy. I certainly did.

Who wouldn't fantasise about being loved by a hugely talented genius who filled their house with flowers - just as Harold did for Antonia?

Yet, when I delve into my memory I recall that a painter bordering on being a genius once did just that for me. I came home to my entire living room floor strewn with scarlet flowers. He was sitting among them, awaiting my arrival. Did I marry him on the spot?

No, instead of recognising, as Lady Antonia did, that this was an exquisite gesture that could change my life, I focused instead on all the reasons why I had to resist the man.

He lived abroad, had a receding jawline and a somewhat alarming dress sense.

Surely these were the tiniest of minor obstacles if I had only had my eye on the bigger picture?

Whether my generation has watched too many slushy movies with happy endings or just read too many self-help books and had a lot of therapy to boost their sense of self-worth, many of us have failed to recognise a potential partner because we were too busy waiting for some Richard Gere lookalike to turn up and re-enact the final scene of An Officer And A Gentleman.

When I was in my early 40s, my partner of seven years left me because he didn't want babies, and I faced a bleak, childless future. 

Then, at 45, I became pregnant by a man I had known for less than a year. It was such an unexpected shock that I initially mistook the symptoms for an early menopause.

I was not in a permanent or committed relationship with the baby's father, but I made a decision. I hate to use the word 'settle' because it suggests the child's father was lacking in some way, and he was not. I prefer to say that I managed my expectations of the man I would share my life with.

Realistic: Charlotte Metcalf who had daughter Deia aged 45

I finally let go of my fantasy that a millionaire poet who looked like George Clooney was going to come along and fall passionately in love with me. After all, even if an impossibly handsome, wealthy poet existed, why on earth would he plump for an ageing hack like me? What on earth was I thinking?

By waiting for some ludicrously gorgeous and perfect fantasy to materialise I had, for years, probably ignored numbers of highly desirable men who were right under my nose.

Sometimes, I've felt a pang of regret as a man I had insouciantly dismissed as being not quite good enough for me reappeared later as a model husband and father, a beaming wife at his side.

I began thinking about how often my friends and I have said, insisting it was in jest: 'Oh, I should have married him!'

So is marriage really what we wanted? One outraged blogger responding to Gottlieb wrote: 'Much of what she says is simply about wanting to fit into traditional society and has little to nothing to do with love.'

Fair enough. So, perhaps the reason this book has caused such uproar is because she's really raising that universal question we're all grappling with: does marriage make us happy?

Young people, without experience of it yet, may think it does. Older people may answer this question more circumspectly. Some of my married friends still seem happy. A few have soldiered on in unhappy marriages for the sake of their children.

Others have persevered after initial disappointments and found, to their surprise, that they have discovered a friend, if not a passionate lover, with whom they can happily share their life. Several have fled.

Having never married, I cannot tell whether I'd have been happier inside the institution, but what I do know for sure is that facing a childless future was utterly miserable - and before I had a child I often thought back to past boyfriends to indulge in wistful 'what might have been' thoughts.

Let's calm down about what this new book is saying. I think Gottlieb's fault is to use the term 'settling' when she talks about the man we choose because it has stirred up a hornets' nest of reaction.

I think, like thousands of wise matchmakers and probably our grandparents before us, she's just saying that if children and a conventional stable home are something you want, stop day-dreaming about being fought over by Colin Firth and Hugh Grant and start dealing with the real men in front of you. Or it could be too late. It's just common sense, really.

If Jane Austen or the Brontes were alive today, Jane Eyre might have failed to see beyond Rochester's crusty exterior and Elizabeth Bennet could have overlooked cold, arrogant Darcy altogether, in the misguided hope that the perfect man was just around the corner.

The last line of Charlotte Bronte's great novel might have read, 'Reader, I should have married him.' If it's a conventional happy ending you want, as opposed to the prospect of a life alone, then I urge you to take heed of what Lori Gottlieb has to say.