Sometimes, You Get What You Pay For

Excerpted from Marriage Ain't Prozac by Susan Jane Gilman in "Single State of the Union -- Single Women Speak Out on Life, Love and the Pursuit of Happiness" edited by Diane Mapes:

Thanks to our culture, many of us view marriage through a mindset of scarcity. We're told that if we don't "hurry up" and "find" a husband, all the "good ones" will be "taken." So our search for a partner becomes like hunting for a Prada blouse during a one-day sale at Neiman-Marcus. We race to the store, tear through the racks like maniacs, looking for something that "fits," and hope that we'll beat the other shoppers to the best bargain before closing time. The fact that we have to choose one outfit to wear every single day for the rest of our lives just makes us even more insane.