More eloquent and explicit:

M. Grégoire

2024-05-04 22:13:41

Marriage shouldn't be about waiting for "the one" who is absolutely perfect either. No one's absolutely perfect, neither are you. If you want to get married and have kids, find someone you think you'll be generally happy with and whom you think will be generally happy with you and choose to love that person as much as you can.

#marriage

I gave this sort of thing a fair amount of thought back in my early 30s. This essay was good, as I recall: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/marry-him/306651/

Dr. Johnson also had some wisdom on the idea of "The One":
Boswell: "Pray, Sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy, as with any one woman in particular?" Johnson: "Ay, Sir, fifty thousand."

#SamuelJohnson
#marriage

@M. Grégoire I wasn't aware that Samuel Johnson had such renown and that people would be quoting his biographies. He seems quite interesting.

He doesn't seem to hold women in very high regard though, so I wouldn't interpret that quote too charitably.

It's probably less about realistic expectations and investing attention, and more about women as replaceable temptresses.

https://samueljohnson.com/marriage.html#187

*The Life of Samuel Johnson* is widely considered the greatest of English biographies -- it really is very good, giving you an idea not just what he did, but what it would have been like to know him. And he was a very interesting fellow, with failings, quirks, and much wisdom, literary and otherwise.

Having read the biography myself, I don't think he regarded women as replaceable temptresses at all. Here, read the words of Nekayah in *Rasselas*: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/652/pg652-images.html