How men marry a woman not in love with

Men are more likely than women to marry someone they feel is not quite right for them, debunking the myth that women will do anything for a ring - and that men, on the other hand, will do anything to shun commitment. The recent Singles in America survey by Match.com - which also drew attention to the sexual differences between political persuasions - delivered the surprising results. Of the survey's 5,000 respondents, 31 per cent of men, compared to 23 per cent of women, admitted they would consider marrying someone who 'has everything they are looking for in a partner' but with whom they weren't in love. 21 per cent of men went even further, confessing that they would commit to someone they weren't sexually attracted to. Contrary to what popular culture suggests - which lady hasn't sympathised with Bridget Jones, or laughed at 27 Dresses? - men, young men in particular, are only too happy to settle. Whether it is a resignation to believing there may never be 'the one' or a case of domestic pragmatism, men are willing to commit and live a life with a woman they feel is not 100 per cent ideal. Counter-intuitively, the urge to marry was even stronger for men in their twenties than for those in their thirties and rose again for men in their forties. The apparent resignation among men to marry for the sake of marrying - and the company, support and security it offers - rather than for love and true attraction does not come as news to some men. Tom Fant, a healthcare consultant in New York, told the Daily Beast: 'The idea of being alone in life can be so overwhelming. Soul crushing for some. Men certainly aren't immune to it, even if most of us like to pretend that we are too strong to be scared, lonely, or, even worse, insecure.' Another, 32-year-old Nick Soman, founder of LikeBright, sees marriage prospects dwindling with age. He is brutally honest about 'horrible' singledom. People start looking at you and thinking, "You seem like a decent dude. Where’s the woman?"' he told the site. 'You’ll go to these weddings, and you’ll be at the increasingly declining table of the singles. There’s, like, three guys and a girl. You’re all kind of looking at each other like, "Wow, these odds are pretty bad."' The Good Men Project's Tom Matlack told the news site that the findings reflect a social 'transformation', driven by employment trends - women are more likely to be the family bread-inner than men - and changing attitudes to being mateless and bringing up a family as a single women, for example. 'It’s kind of like feminism on its head: for years, women were trying to earn the right to get out of the house, and here are all these men dying to get back into [it],' he said. He also suggests that the poll reflects a maturity in men. 'Are you always madly in love with your spouse? No.' Marriage, he suggests, is challenging - and is about far more than being 'mad;y in love' and sex. The same poll found that only 44 per cent of men, compared to 50 per cent of women, believed bad sex could end a relationship. Women still put emphasis on education and career success when picking a mate and the economy has not changed dating habits. It also revealed the eyebrow-raising revelation that although conservatives have less sex than Democrats, they climax almost every time, compared to just 40 per cent of the time for Democrats.