How to find your perfect man

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Lionel Shriver has narrated this article for you to listen to.

My late parents perpetually promoted their marriage as the best in the history of the universe. Because this cult of two was hardly subtle, others readily detected what they wanted to hear, so fawning social admiration of what lovebirds they were made them even worse. For us kids, this Trumpesque superlative (how they’d hate that adjective) wasn’t remotely as traumatising as divorce, but still – the romantic hagiography was a bit much. In our adulthoods, our own sad little relationships could never compare, and our parents seemed to feel sorry for us. While big proponents of marriage as an institution, they seemed to regard their children’s marriages as pale imitations – you know, nice try, kids.

An algorithm is the wrong tool for finding someone whose company you can freakishly tolerate

Even if they sometimes wielded their contentment as a cudgel, I’m glad they were happy together. Though I tied the knot late at 46, I’ve followed in their matrimonial footsteps for more than two decades. For me, then, the Wall Street Journal’s lengthy feature last month, ‘American Women Are Giving Up on Marriage’, sounded a sorrowful note.

In the US: in 2022, only a third of single women were looking for love; in defiance of the old commitment-phobe cliché, more than half of single men were on the market. Over half of women aged 18 to 40 are neither married nor cohabitating, a figure that’s risen by 10 per cent this century. In a 2023 poll, nearly half of women didn’t regard marriage as that important for a fulfilling life, compared with 39 per cent of men – rising from 31 per cent and 28 per cent only four years earlier. Last year, only 47 per cent of American households were headed by married couples; in 1949, that figure was 79 per cent.