Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Get-Your-Man-to-Marry-You Plan: Buying the Cow in the Age of Free Milk
    The Get-Your-Man-to-Marry-You Plan: Buying the Cow in the Age of Free Milk
    The Get-Your-Man-to-Marry-You Plan: Buying the Cow in the Age of Free Milk
    Ebook170 pages2 hours

    The Get-Your-Man-to-Marry-You Plan: Buying the Cow in the Age of Free Milk

    By Lori Uscher-Pines, Ph.D.

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    What's a gal to do when her man's giving her everything she wants except a ring? This irreverent guide will help the marriage-ready woman evaluate the severity of her not-so-ready man's excuses for delaying marriage and sharpen her abilities to dismantle them. With a funny but firm hand, Lori Uscher-Pines, who herself maneuvered for a ring from her now-husband, offers the reader serious tips for securing a marriage proposal from the excuse-ridden, free-milk-gulping man she loves.

    Buying the Cow in the Age of Free Milk includes:

    *How to know if it's really time to push for a ring

    *The difference between me excuses, you excuses and institution of marriage excuses

    *The "severity" scale of common male excuses, and the associated tactics for changing his mind

    *Behavior fouls not to make on the quest for a proposal

    Pushing for a proposal is about female empowerment, and this must-have guide will help the reader take control of her personal life without giving up the romantic, "then-he-got-down-on-one-knee" moment she's always imagined.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateOct 14, 2008
    ISBN9781429989992
    The Get-Your-Man-to-Marry-You Plan: Buying the Cow in the Age of Free Milk
    Author

    Lori Uscher-Pines, Ph.D.

    LORI USCHER-PINES holds a Ph.D. in public health from Johns Hopkins University. She lives in suburban Philadelphia with her husband who never regrets her (whoops, his) decision to get married.

    Related to The Get-Your-Man-to-Marry-You Plan

    Related ebooks

    Relationships For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Dating Drama

      Jun 1, 2020

      Dating Drama
      8 min read

    • Article

      Femme Fatale

      Oct 12, 2018

      Femme Fatale
      3 min read

    • Article

      Is Being A B***h Really So Bad?

      Feb 23, 2021

      A 19-year-old relationship guidebook that urges women to be ‘bitches’ has become a bestseller, after going viral among young women on the social media app TikTok. Why Men Love Bitches advises women to transform themselves ‘from doormat to dream girl

      1 min read

    • Article

      Be The Best At Breaking Up

      Jan 13, 2020

      Be The Best At Breaking Up
      3 min read

    • Article

      Girl Talk

      Jan 24, 2020

      Girl Talk
      1 min read

    • Article

      “I Went To Wife School”

      Mar 5, 2020

      “I Went To Wife School”
      8 min read

    • Article

      Relationship MYTH BUSTERS

      Feb 7, 2021

      Relationship MYTH BUSTERS
      2 min read

    • Article

      Horoscopes

      Jan 27, 2020

      A lingering romantic dream or secret hopes for the future will fire your imagination. Quiet reflections will answer unspoken questions. A fun invitation will open a charming social door. A knowledgeable new contact will be worth their weight in gold;

      3 min read

    • Article

      Hong Kong Sugar Babies, Singapore Sugar Daddies - But It's NOT About Selling Sex, These Dating Websites Insist

      Mar 25, 2018

      Lily is not your average university student. Even among the young Hongkonger's crowd of affluent friends, her reputation for conspicuous consumption raises eyebrows. She flies business class, sports handbags by Chanel and Hermes, takes foreign trips

      5 min read

    • Article

      Your Romantic Ideals Don’t Predict Who Your Future Partner Will Be

      Aug 5, 2020

      Last year, I briefly ran an analogue dating service. I’ll never know what inspired me to start it—maybe my stable relationship had me missing the excitement of single life—but I loved the simplicity of it. There were no questionnaires, no algorithms,

      8 min read

    • Article

      Love Under Pressure

      Nov 20, 2020

      WHEN a newly married man looks happy, we know why. But when a man who’s been married for 10 years looks happy, we wonder why. This is just one of many, many jokes about marriage. Is it funny because it’s true? Because behind the joke lies the belief

      3 min read

    • Article

      TOWN & COUNTRY

      Sep 23, 2021

      TOWN & COUNTRY
      3 min read

    • Article

      Winning Letter

      Nov 10, 2023

      A FRIEND sent me a reminder that Christmas movies have started showing so it’s almost time for the holidays. Spring has also finally shown itself in Cape Town, bringing with it that feeling of sun, fun and winding down. But, of course, there’s still

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Experts

      Jan 18, 2022

      The Experts
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Experts

      Aug 24, 2021

      Q My lovely new man wants sex every single day, which is great, but I definitely don’t want it that often. If I’m being honest, I’m feeling pressured – and he’s now noticed that. We talked about it for the first time last night and he’s been great, s

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Woman’s Work

      Apr 29, 2022

      A Woman’s Work
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Experts

      Aug 9, 2022

      The Experts
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Experts

      Sep 28, 2021

      Q When my husband and I were first dating, we broke up for a few months and I saw someone else during the split. A few months ago he said he’d like us to have an open marriage and be able to see other people. I said no, at which he said I owed him an

      4 min read

    • Article

      Useful Failures

      Sep 13, 2019

      In the afterglow of a can-do workshop, when everyone feels comfortable enough to explore inferior decisions I’ve made, someone will ask, “What have been your biggest business failures?” Failures don’t inspire, so I tend not to dwell on them. But they

      5 min read

    • Article

      Winning Letter

      Oct 13, 2023

      HANDS up if you’ve ever used the kids pages in our Young YOU section to do your own homework or help your children or grandkids with theirs. I’m raising my hand over here – those pages were a lifesaver when I had to do school projects back in the day

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Get-Your-Man-to-Marry-You Plan

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Get-Your-Man-to-Marry-You Plan - Lori Uscher-Pines, Ph.D.

      How This Cow Sold Herself

      Why buy the cow when you can

      get the milk for free?

      –MY MOTHER (AND EVERYONE ELSE’S)

      marriage can be wonderful. It is a historic, sacred institution that provides security, respectability, tax breaks, and regular nookie. Every culture from Africa to Antarctica embraces it. It means always having a date for Valentine’s Day other than Ben and Jerry. It is proof of your commitment, a public statement that you love and are loved in return. Hey, dozens of animals (for example, beavers, bald eagles…even pigeons in the park) know how great it is to mate for life. Surely if a bird that drinks from puddles and eats trash knows the value of marriage, we all should!

      Overall, happily married people are healthier, accumulate more wealth, and get a chance at the good life. So, of course you want to get married and you can’t understand why your boyfriend is unsure. You are thinking: If we get hitched, we get to make long-term plans with each other. We get fluffy new towels and a waffle iron. I get to have a big white wedding and make all my friends wear unflattering dresses to get back at them for the hideous peach things I had to wear at their weddings. I get to be the center of attention for a day and the center of his world for a lifetime.

      Once upon a time, I too set out to convince my boyfriend that it was the right time to marry me, to finally buy this cow. With all that free milk, he had become fat and confused. But I’m really quite good at getting a guy to pay for something that was once as free to him as the silverware at Denny’s. If you think about it, this requires profound skill. You wouldn’t suddenly start paying for samples of Kirkland-brand cocktail wieners at Costco. If they charged, you would complain to the manager and hunt for free hot dogs elsewhere. You have a major challenge in front of you if you want to get your boyfriend moving on the proposal, but as long as you’re confident that he is the one, I am here to help you.

      I was once right where you are, feeling the same things you are feeling, and I pushed for marriage and strategized. It wasn’t that my man was unsure about me or didn’t recognize the economic benefit of having other people buy us an espresso machine; rather, he just wasn’t in a great hurry. I initiated talks about marriage, but months passed. I initiated talks about engagement, but the only proposals I witnessed were on YouTube. He repeatedly said that he understood what I wanted and it was coming. He offered no formal excuse for stalling, but talked to me about the need for perfect timing. I had visions of toddling down the aisle, leaning on a walker and trying desperately not to break my hip. Marriage was not coming according to my perfect timing.

      My man really wanted me to move in with him long before we got engaged. He wanted me to quit my job, change cities, and basically squeeze out all my precious milk for a prospective customer. My first realization was that doing this would not get me hitched any faster. I remained firmly planted in my city but promised him that once we got engaged, I’d always be around to proofread his work reports and fold his socks into neat little balls.

      I credit my husband-catching success to always speaking openly about my expectations and withholding most of my milk until I got exactly what I wanted. In other words, I followed some wise, age-old advice. Since gas started to cost a fortune and milk became free, all the rules of driving and dating appear to have changed. Today you are supposed to fool around in the backseat of a fuel-efficient car, perhaps a Mini Cooper or a Prius. If the world is such a different place now, why does the expression Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? still hold true? Well, dating practices may change but human nature does not. Luxury product makers like Rolex know that the best way to make more money and to create mystique is to actually raise the price of a product and to limit the supply.

      What exactly do we mean by milk? The milk that is given out for free all over the world is not just sex (as our grandmothers understood it). Milk is any number of benefits men get from being married. These include sex on a regular basis, companionship, and a wife who gets the car inspected. You basically need to have premarital sex to play the dating game in this day and age, but how much of the rest of your milk you give away is up to you.

      Don’t give it all away or cheapen its value by becoming a wife before you actually have a husband; however, if you have already given too much away, you can use the tactics in this book to reclaim your power. It doesn’t matter if you live with a man or three thousand miles away from him. Remember that there is no shame in going after what you want or using tactics to achieve a goal. You do this every day in business and in your personal life, and any tools you learn here can be applied to a myriad of life situations. Business tactics win money and power, psychological tactics win hearts and minds, and military tactics win battles. Getting-him-to-propose tactics win husbands.

      If you hate thinking of yourself as a cow with a milk supply of sex, companionship, and support to give away, get over it now. All of this is just a funny way to think about a very real problem. Also, get over the idea that pushing for marriage is somehow beneath you. I too worried that it was antifeminist to want marriage so much, and unromantic or manipulative to wear him down. Well, does feminism say that you should be powerless in your personal life? That you should kick butt at work but be passive at home? Does feminism somehow advocate that life-altering events be solely the man’s decision? Does talking a guy into an institution that will make him healthier, wealthier, and happier seem wrong? Hell no. After getting over my initial concerns, I finally learned how to get what I desired, and the goal here is to teach you everything I learned.

      The Get-Your-Man-to-Marry-You Plan presented here is perfect for you if you are in a long-term relationship or may find yourself in one in the next few years. Given the fact that the average American male is more afraid of commitment than of a twelve-month tour in Iraq, even if you are single now, you need to know this stuff. In general, a boyfriend is reluctant to begin what he sees as his lemminglike march to the sea of tulle, rice kernels, and pain. Your relationship may be solid, but he is just not in the same hurry you are. You feel the biological clock ticking, or you see your friends getting settled and registering for gravy boats, or you want to buy a condo. Unlike Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, whom you adore, you are conventional and would rather have children in wedlock. Your man loves you, but is just not keen on change. You, of course, are not trying to manipulate him into doing something that isn’t good for him; you are just showing the guy who loves the status quo like he loves a steak or a flat-screen TV, that marriage is not so scary. The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University surveyed men and reported that 94 percent of married guys are happier being hitched than being single. Men flourish in marriage, and don’t you want to help him flourish?

      My tactics to trigger a proposal can help everyone, but you should be careful to pick and choose which ones you use if your boyfriend is not serious about you or, alternatively, your boyfriend is extremely serious and is about to propose. You shouldn’t start to push really hard just to shave a few weeks off the wait. Also, you must select tactics based on the unique personality of your man. All men are not the same, and any dating book that gives you a list of universal truths about men is full of it. This attitude is dangerous (not to mention stupid) and can lead you to try tactics that can backfire. So, evaluate and modify each potential tactic to speak specifically to him. This plan offers some general rules on human nature, but there are always exceptions. There are even situations in which the what not to do moves can actually work to your advantage. Men are complex creatures (note that complex can refer to anything with a brain larger than a golf ball). You know your guy better than anyone, so don’t doubt your instincts.

      The plan also requires that you be willing to play tough. If while trying the tactics you discover that he won’t recant his antimarriage position, you have to be willing to walk. If you can continue indefinitely as Smithers to his Monty Burns rather than move on, then these tactics are not right for you. You must be committed enough to becoming his wife to risk becoming his ex-girlfriend. Men—like women—do want to get married eventually, but men would also keep us waiting for decades if they

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1