Peaches is the cat that got the cream

Today on Salon I read an excerpt from Marrying Anita: A Quest For Love In The New India, a book by Anita Jain. Ms. Jain, who lives in New York, had got tired of pretending that dating was fun and had turned her back on the traditonal pick and mix of penises and STDs, of burst condoms, drunkenly scribbled phone numbers on match boxes, she didn't want an affair with a married man, had no interest in being a fuckbuddy to anyone and didn't want a friends with benefits non-committal relationship either. She wanted to fall in love and get married and said that admitting that made her run the risk of seeming like a freak.

"To admit to others that I yearned for a long-term commitment or marriage… sounded regressive as soon as it emerged from my mouth," she writes. "It was atavistic in nature, a throwback to a time when women couldn't financially support themselves. It was a piece of treacherous anathema in the age of strong, independent working women." Ms. Jain came to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with her: There was something wrong with the system.

"We are told that it's best to meet friends of friends," Ms. Jain writes. "We all think this is a brilliant idea, until we realize that we've already met all of our friends' friends ... two years ago." She lays the blame on Western culture, specifically the American pride in being the best:

"For a decidedly unmystical society that seems to have the answer for everything else — the best medical care, cutting-edge technology, superhighways, and space shuttles — it seems odd that people are left to their own resources, casting around for another lonely soul, for what is arguably the most important decision of their lives."

I really think she has a point. So much emphasis is put on how once women get hitched we have somehow signed on to some old-style ball and chain prison sentence and have forgone our independence, but let's face it, love makes the world go round and can you really say you're not happiest when you're in love? I think most people become a lot less neurotic when they're in a good healthy love relationship rather than whizzing around on the dating merry go round like headless chickens.

Anyway, since Ms. Jain couldn't find the right guy in New York she made a decision: She'd go to India, where men actually want to get married. "People commonly go to India to find themselves or to find god, but I went to India to find a husband," she writes.

Good on her, I say. She was tired of feeling that wanting a commitment was a sign of weakness in the West. And okay, some women like living alone but many don't and why not admit you're desperately lonely and want to be in a long term relationship or marriage? It's almost like admitting defeat, like saying that the Sex and the City lifestyle is fun at first but soon feels like drinking flat Coke and eating stale crisps.

Even Peaches Geldof has just got married rather than dipping her wick with every Tom Dick and Harry by marrying some ginger rocker. Good on ya Peaches!

So what do you say? Is dating like eating a bag of bad nuts or would you rather be married?