Modern-day Charlotte Lucas.

I've been doing some thinking in the back of my mind about settling. The millions of Christian articles which urge men to be godly and prayerfully pursue godly women… ideally, yes, but how often does that happen, really? How many couples I know actually got married because two perfect people who love Jesus were both attracted to each other (esp each other's godliness), the man took the lead, the woman responded, it was romantic, they prayed all the time, had a perfect courtship, never felt awkward, got married and lived happily ever after growing more like Jesus? It's the ideal, but this isn't heaven. Everyone settles.

Read this today:

"Rela­tion­ships are hard work. Love doesn’t hap­pen overnight. You’re not com­mit­ting to mar­ry­ing the first guy you go out with*. Give a guy a break. If you enjoy hang­ing out with him in groups, or in one on one set­tings, don’t hang out for Mr Right — hang out with Mr Right in Front of You. A bird in the hand and all that prover­bial jazz.

"Most Chris­t­ian guys have prob­lems — part of becom­ing a Chris­t­ian means you recog­nise you have fail­ings. The ones who don’t appear to have prob­lems are prob­a­bly arro­gant or har­bour­ing some sort of deep seeded emo­tional issues any­way, scratch the sur­face of most guys and they’re prob­a­bly incred­i­bly inse­cure when it comes to rela­tion­ships or entirely too scared of com­mit­ment to be worth pur­su­ing (that’s why they’ve dated all of your friends and none of the rela­tion­ships have lasted). If a guy seems to have it together, can hold down a job, and is pass­able at con­ver­sa­tion then he’s prob­a­bly a win­ner. It helps if you find him mod­er­ately attractive."

Although it's still hypothetical because there really are no guys in the 'single girl ghetto'. Some excellent wisdom from that wisest of spinsters, Jane Austen: "There is a great scarcity of Men in general, & a still greater scarcity of any that were good for much."

* But oh boy will I speculate about it, and my response to the potential "do you want to hang out" will be based on "do I want to marry you". Really hard to overcome that.