What's wrong with settling?

You can probably respond to this post's headline quickly. In relationships, the term "settling" often generates all sorts of negative images. Maybe it's among many daters' worst fears.

Nonetheless, I found these study results detailed in a recent Daily Beast article:

A whopping 31 percent of adult men said they’d commit to a person they were not in love with — as long as as she had all the other attributes they were looking for in a mate — and 21 percent said they'd commit under those same circumstances to somebody they weren't sexually attracted to. The equivalent numbers for women were far lower.

But women have discussed settling, too. The Daily Beast piece points to Lori Gottlieb’s "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough" as an example.

We need to think about the difference between settling and accepting the fact that no relationship will be perfect.

If we commit to a relationship that's fulfilling and enjoyable, yet hardly a storybook romance, is that settling? I don't know.