Don’t Settle on My Account
I was bemoaning the single-ness of my being and a particularly horrible date. (Telling me what to do while checking sports scores on your phone? Are you high? No second date for you.) The friend I was talking to is a woman in her 50s and she said “Take some wisdom from an old lady: Date older men — they’ve gotten to a point where if they fall in love they are willing to settle for a big girl.”
Goldfishing: What happens when you are so surprised that you just open and close your mouth, but no actual sound comes out.
First, I’m just gong to say it: call me a braggart if you want, but I’m a successful CEO, a three-time national dance champion, I own my own home, my own car, I’ve built several successful businesses, and I write things that cause perfect strangers to identify themselves as my fans (which always completely makes my day and shocks me). I’m comfortable, happy and confident in my body and have an impressive lingerie collection. What I’m trying to say here is that I think it’s a pretty fucked up world if someone is in love with me and still feels like they are settling.
Even more shocking to me was that she thought I would think that was a good thing. I will be single for the rest of my life before I will be in a relationship with someone who thinks that they are “settling” for my body (or anything else for that matter). I’m allergic to cats, so I can’t become a cat lady, but I will get a big Great Dane, I will name him Prince Charming, and I will live a fantastic single life dressing him up in stupid clothes and hanging out with my friends and my dog. Seriously.
I do believe that there is someone out there for me and that I’ll be in a wonderful relationship (and I’ll probably get the dog either way), but I think it’s important to remember that we live in a world where the unbelievably wealthy diet industry spends a lot of money trying to convince us that nobody will ever love us until we are thin.
It’s not true.
There are a lot of really happy fat people in great relationships. We don’t have to buy what the diet industry is selling when it comes to eating plans, and we don’t have to buy it when it comes to relationship worthiness. And we certainly don’t have to settle for being settled for.
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What horrible advice. And I seriously doubt that she would give that same advice to a fat man, ya know? The only similarity would be her advice to older men: data a fat woman, she’ll sleep with anyone!
Ugh! I hate these kind of assumptions. It just makes you want to scream!
You’re dead on when it comes to not settling. Nobody has to settle. Nobody!
Peace,
Shannon
Settle? Please….. The older men I’ve met and dated tell me the same thing, its not settling. It’s being with a woman who is comfortable in her own skin, appreciating the softness and the curves. One guy said he dated a size 4, and all she would do is obsess over diets, appearance, not wanting to have sex with the lights on. As he put it “I have gotten this far in life and I want to appreciate things, and I want a woman who feels the same.” Amen.
Maybe its me, but it sounds like the friend wasn’t being very friendly. More like a push to get thin so you can attract a man that won’t settle.
I’ve just finished a really dreadful chicklit book, which had the message that thin woman are ALL obsessively dieting and are no fun, and fat women are ALL playing second fiddle to the thin women, but are more fun, if only men would look at them etc…
So just wanted to add, (after sitting through all that) that you can be size 4 (is that 8 here in the UK??) and fun and accept your body, and size… whatever, however high it goes, and be the same. Just there’s a bit of a stereotype about neurotic thin women, and while some people do act like that about food, not everyone does!
Settle my ass! I’m in my late 20s and I already get told that I ‘probably won’t find a man until I’m older’ because ‘young men don’t want fat women’. I’m smart and I’m cute and if someone persists in just seeing FAT, that’s their problem, not mine.
Oh, I totally beg to differ. One of my besties at work has 50lbs on me and is a total cougar. She is never lacking for, shall we say, young blood? She’s 45, prefers the 21-26 set. Where do people get off with this stuff? TV maybe, but not in real life
I am in my fifties. I think a woman who is that age and refers to herself as an “old lady” already has some self esteem issues. Sounds like she was a mite jealous of you and your wonderful energy, spirit, pride and intelligence.
Settle my ass..! Why should anyone “settle” anyway, whatever her size or age? I don’t see that most marriages are so happy that people should be so very anxious to get into one.
Thank you for this post! I’ve been thinking about this lately (and bemoaning my singleness at the moment) and this was something I definitely needed to read to lift my spirits a bit. Except for the part about the “friendly” advice—that was … unnecessary. Shame on her.
I think she wasn’t being unfriendly-just ignorant. Shrug it off.
Better to have no partner than one that doesn’t love you just as you are.
Better advice might have been the old saw about your having to kiss a lot of toads before you find a prince.
I did like her advice to date older men. Speaking as one, I feel I have at least learned something in my years about how to let a partner be what she wants to be, and to love and appreciate that quality. Believe me, I am not “settling for” my partner, nor she for me. If you have to settle, forgetaboutit.
Plus, as an FA, I think it would be bad chemistry if you were with someone who merely “tolerates” or is willing to “settle for” your size, shape, or anything else about you or your body.
The word “settle”-ick.
But it can be true that older people are less concerned with what others think. There might be younger people who are attracted to fat potential partners, but can’t buck the social pressure to “date thin”.
I’m around your age, and notice that the older I get, the less I give a crap about what strangers think about me.
that’s a Horrible advice! no one deserves to be treated as a consolation prize, and is no good that people thinks that its a good idea to give this kind of advices, like if you don’t deserve better! Why should anyone be treated as a second class women.
I was once told a a really “tragic” story-advice when I mentioned my boyfriend (of many years), the women suddenly told me about her fat cousin making enfasis almost in every opportunity how she was a bit fat, then she continued to tell me about how she was left by his many years Boyfriend for a better looking slim women, and then she added, I’m not saying that that’s what is going to happened to you, but man are like that.
What is that supposed to mean to me any way? did she called me ugly and in her twisted mind it was a good piece of advice? bull shit!
suddenly I think that the cousin of this woman was better of that as-hole!
Yeah, my brother told me 30 years ago, when I was 27 and single, that I was going to be an old maid (kinda hard to be an old maid when you’re a single mother….lol). I think he meant that I’d never get married because I was an independent, opinionated woman who knew what I wanted and wasn’t willing to “settle” for just anyone. Well, the joke is on him. I met and married a wonderful man - I was 52 when we met, turned 53 soon after that and we married soon after that. Was it worth the wait? Not just hell yes, but fucking-A yes it was. Did I kiss a lot of toads before I found Mr Wonderful? I sure did, and I’m glad I didn’t pass on Mr Wonderful - I almost didn’t answer his response to my personal ad, I’d had so many responses who were of the “how big are your boobs, what kind of sex do you like, let’s cyber” variety that I wasn’t willing to risk another of those. Fortunately for both of us, he wasn’t even close to anything like that (none of those questions ever came up in conversation until after we’d met in person and decided to have a relationship, and the cyber one never did).
So I say keep on kissing toads/frogs, eventually Mr/Ms Right will come along and all that kissing of toads/frogs will totes have been worth it.
The times I’ve been hit on my by men, they weren’t that older than me and the majority of them were very thin. I have seen a lot of thin men in my neck of the woods with ladies who are deathfat like me. So there are men who don’t have hang-ups about weight.
Usually when us gals do settle, we end up in an abusive relationships. It’s not worth it to have a man simply just to say we have one. Your “friend” definitely needs some re-edumacation (spelled on purpose).
I definitely agree with the person who said your 50ish woman “friend” probably has some serious self-esteem issues herself. Not to mention that as a 50ish woman myself, I would not be pleased to be viewed as an “old woman”-I’m definitely wiser than I was at 20, and much more experienced, but these are gifts that can only come with age.
don’t ever settle. ever. and don’t ever let yourself be the one someone settles for. Having done both it just isn’t worth it. eventually that person you settle for resents you…because you cant lie 24-7. you cant fake true love. i’m over 6 foot tall, well over 300 lbs…a size 28. and i found the man of my dreams. who loves me because of my curves, not despite them.
DancesWithFat-
OK, I’m going to play Devil’s Advocate and defend your friend’s position (in a way). All upcoming comments and observations are in and on general, broad-brush terms, because, as we all know there are exceptions to every rule.
Here we go: I;m not sure how old you are, but like your friend, I would also encourage women my age (50 and up) to look towards men of the same age or beyond for several reasons. This especially applies to “older women” like me who do not fit into the very narrow definition of what our culture considers “beautiful” and “hot” cougar-women.
* Older men tend to have matured to the point that having a “hot trophy wife” is less important than having a woman of intelligence and substance to share life with. Empty-headed - but “hot” - women get boring real fast for most men. (I am not implying that ALL good looking, thin women are empty headed; nor are all fat women smart but unattractive, either…)
* Public opinion and opinions of friends/family based on how great-looking (read; THIN and busty, or PETITE and busty, busty and booty-ful with tiny waist, etc) their girlfriend is — is no longer a deciding factor for most older men. A man in his late 50′s or early 60′s does not feel like explaining who The Ramones were, where Woodstock took place, or what vinyl records and 8-tracks were all the time…
* Most times, real men understand that time marches on for THEM as well. Real men realize that they are not as strong, nor as fit, nor as thin or ‘buff’ as they were before they turned 40, or 50. They too have gotten a little softer, a little weaker and have a little less (a lot less?) stamina than when they peaked at 25. AND they are OK with that reality.
* Women also need to take the older man as HE IS as well. I would not however call this “settling” for anyone. I don’t believe anyone should “settle for” a person not deserving of their time, attention and love. It must be a two way street. So that terminology is not something I would use, and I don’t think your friend was right in using it, either.
There is a distinct difference between “settling” for someone, and following a reality-based criteria for dating and long-term partner material.
I’m going to give your friend a HUGE benefit of the doubt here, and assume she merely chose the wrong terminology for an otherwise not too crazy notion that it’s “better” to date within our own age range or beyond…
Ok, ramble done.
Excellent response! “Cougars” have claws, and as an older man, I would never want to date someone who doesn’t remember Richard Nixon. LOL
From a very young age, I always expected (yes, expected) to be the girl my future husband settled for. I believed I’d be married, but I never believed I’d be the love of someone’s life. I dreamed about being the love of someone’s life but seriously thought about it like I did Disney movies and books: Not real. Not going to happen. And even when a man settled for me, I figured he’d cheat on me. I just believed that’s what the future held for the little fat girl from California.
Surprise, surprise when I met my boyfriend and we both flipped for one another. Now, I’m not scared. I don’t worry about not being good enough for him. I don’t worry about him cheating. I feel good enough. I feel like the perfect girlfriend and, honestly, the Fat Acceptance movement started that and helps boost my ego when I’m feeling down. Keith (the boyfriend) also helps. He’s never bemoaned my body. He understands that I consider any weight related comments directed at me to be an attack on my autonomy… even if it’s “You look thinner.”
Just having someone who will touch me all over without hesitation reminds me how frickin’ lovable I am.
I’m no boobie prize. Neither are you.