8/5/13 – Insanely Happy: Why Good-Enough is Better than Great

Lori Gottlieb noticed in her private therapy practice that many people attributed their unhappiness to something external in their lives – their spouse or lack of a spouse, their boss, their income, their children. Over time, however, she came to believe that often, what was “wrong” in people’s lives was their perception of what daily life was actually about. The sociologist Barry Schwartz said that “expectations are disappointments in training,” and Gottlieb, also a journalist, decided to thoroughly research this concept as it applied to relationships and marriage. In her New York Times bestseller, MARRY HIM: THE CASE FOR SETTLING FOR MR. GOOD ENOUGH, she looks at how our culture’s view of happy relationships is squarely at odds with the scientific research on what actually makes for passionate, fulfilling, and long-lasting marriages, and how more generally, our dogged pursuit of a misguided view of happiness is making many of us, paradoxically, needlessly miserable