I’m chagrined to write that when I was younger I fell fort he BS of believing that someone could care for me while “not looking for something serious”, being unwilling to call me a boyfriend and claiming to have a unique, erudite “philosophy” of not defining relationships, not using “labels”. I was made a foold by this kind of thing more than once. I guess that was being young is partly about.

I was suprised to find that the movie brought back old feelings of disappointment, humiliation, anger and hurt.

I’m glad this movie is out there now, for the sensitive and naive young guys out there. It will save them a lot of hurt.

If someone isn’t willing to call herself your GF or “define the relationship” you don’t have a relationship. Move on.

Who knows what’s behind your last question, but it wouldn’t be professionally appropriate to comment more than occasionally without mentioning appearance. Speculation, possibly enjoyable, needs to be grounded with factoids, or else it could be damaging.

I didn’t mention physical attractiveness as a basis for anything. Frankly I find physical attractiveness too subjective to be evaluated on a meaningful scale. Would you care cite the research paper that indicated an 8 settling for a 5 would have a decreased chance of a lasting bond? I’d like to know how, precisely, the researcher defined an *8* and a *5*.

In any event my response to Sophie was about the desire to have children. Why do you keep bringing up physical attractiveness in every post you write Mic?

As far as anecdotal evidence goes, I think we tend to gravitate to people who are most like us in terms of lifestyle, so our “statistics” are likely to be skewed in terms of comparisons with our friends.

Offhand, I can’t think of anyone I know who “settled” for someone they weren’t in love with in order to be married/ have children. But also, the overwhelming majority of people I’ve known well had their first child by age 26. I have a couple friends who married at 30, but they also chose their partners based on love, not a sense of practicality.

So I wonder if this phenomena of choosing a partner based on how well you get along, disregarding “chemistry”, has more to do with the urge to procreate. There can be a strong pull for this for people in their 30′s. Women who want biological children realize they don’t have an unlimited time span to make that happen. I’ve heard men say they want to have children while they are still young enough to play with them.

Extrapolating, the statistics for people who are “not in love” per se, on their wedding day I think might be skewed to people in their 30′s, perhaps 40′s, who haven’t had a romantic liason that produced offspring. Further, I suspect in some cases, people who have not been in love – as opposed to infatuation which is fleeting – may doubt such a thing exists. And therefore why wait for it? Just speculation ofcourse.

Can you give me/us an idea of how many of your friends you think/know married people they weren’t in love with? Both in absolute terms and as a percentage of all of your friends? Do you think men and women make this sort of decision equally often?

And to the other posters on this blog, how widespread do you think this practice is in societey as a whole? I have tried to find academic papers on this subject online but haven’t had much luck, I’d like to know what perecentage of people aren’t in love on their wedding day. I don’t want to “settle” but I think it would make it easier if I knew that its what a lot of people end up having to do.

And to Selena, I agree, I don’t think chemistry and stability are opposing forces. There’s no idea why you can’t get both in theory. Practice is another thing!

More recently (spurred on by meeting someone who would be a great husband and father, but whom I could probably never love) I realized that unless I love, love, LOVE a person, I wouldn’t be able to take care of him if he falls ill. I mean, without it feeling like an imposition on my life.