What I didnrt realize when I decided

What I didnrt realize when I decided, in my 30s, to break up with boyfriends I might otherwise have ended up marrying, is that while settling seems like an enormous act of resignation when yourre looking at it from the vantage point of a single person, once you take the plunge and do it, yourll probably be relatively content. It sounds obvious now, but I didnrt fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isnrt necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once yourre married, itrs not about whom you want to go on vacation with; itrs about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isnrt a passion-fest; itrs more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.
I donrt mean to say that settling is ideal. Irm simply saying that it might have gotten an undeservedly bad rap. As the only single woman in my sonrs mommy-and-me group, I used to listen each week to a litany of unrelenting complaints about peoplers husbands and feel pretty good about my decision to hold out for the right guy, only to realize that these women wouldnrt trade places with me for a second, no matter how dull their marriages might be or how desperately they might long for a different husband. They, like me, would rather feel alone in a marriage than actually be alone, because they, like me, realize that marriage ultimately isnrt about cosmic connectionmitrs about how having a teammate, even if hers not the love of your life, is better than not having one at all.