How Is This Page Different?

This page is not about how you can find a man, or what to do so you are more attractive to a man, or how to flirt, or any other idea that blames you for being single.

This page is for women with lots of life experiences, who are wise and competent and successful in many areas of their lives.

This page is for heterosexual mid-life and Baby Boomer women who have always been single (AS) or who are single again (SA) after divorce or death of a husband.

Here’s my bias: Being single is not a personal problem; it’s a societal problem that causes women problems! Society (including mothers and grown daughters and even best friends) keep repeating the prejudice that it is a woman’s fault she is not married or remarried. Too many women buy that self-blame.

Of course, you have to make yourself into the best woman you can be and resolve old baggage from childhood and prior relationships. You have to have a full and meaningful life – whether or not you ever meet a man of you choosing. You have to do all this so when or if you do meet this man, he will be the icing on your already wonderful cake of your life.

My bias, built on almost 4 decades of professional experience, leads me to this unspoken truth:   More women than men are pursuing their personal growth, so more women than men are ready for a healthy relationship.

Self Blame

Too many women needlessly blame themselves for being single. And they get help from people who love and care about them, as well as from professionals and self-help books, with tactless accusations such as: "You don’t give a man a chance." "You’re too choosey." "You’re too set in your ways." "You aren’t feminine enough."

Well, let me tell you something... I am mad.

I'm mad so many smart, professionally successful, delightful women beat up on themselves because … they aren't married or haven't stayed married or haven't remarried.

WHAT DO YOU NEED? (and it isn’t learning to flirt)

You need to learn how to take the control you can have of your life. You can’t make an emotionally available man (EAM) appear. But, you do have control over how you will get your needs met, such as for a social life, physical touch, emotional. In fact, in my book, With or Without A Man: Single Women Taking Control of Their Lives, I enumerate nine areas of your life you do have control over, that will make you feel better about the life you have – for however long you are single.

To help women make this transition from self-blame or helplessness to taking control, I wrote Workbook for With or Without A Man. This has 30 exercises, divided into four sections: Recognizing How You’ve Absorbed Messages; Shifting Your Thinking; Fighting the Blues; Changing: You Can Make a Difference.

And, to present some of the struggles of being single and then a different world view, I complied 11 Stories on Being Single in a Married World. These stories are about women I’ve seen in therapy, their struggles and their solutions.

The worst thing about being single is…

"Ambiguous Loss." You may experience this without ever having a name for it. Ambiguous Loss is the not knowing whether you should mourn for the good relationship you want but know you'll never have or keep hoping. While hoping is good, if you knew you would never meet a man of your choice – then hoping is not good. That’s the ambiguity – no resolution to your loss.

Have you ever thought about it this way? I’d love to hear from you. If there is something else that is the worst thing about about being single, please let me know.

BEING SINGLE IS ALSO A POLITIC STATEMENT

What, you may ask, does being single have to do with politics. To answer that, I need to ask you a question: Did you know there’s a national organization for singles?

Unmarried America (www.Unmarried.org) is a political organization that lobbies congress on behalf of the 100 million single men and women on issues such as the law, finances, taxes, health insurance

This dovetails with my desire to help society think differently about singles. In the weekend Unique Retreats for Single Women, participants decide if they want to make changes just for themselves. Or, they may want to invest in change society. In the '70s, women did provoke societal changes through their local Conscious Raising (CR) groups around the country. And, we can have CR groups that do the same for single women.

MY GOAL

My goal in working with wise, competent, successful single women is to help you exorcise any of the old messages that interfere with your ability to

• feel good about yourself
• make good choices about your life
• take control of the things in your life where you do have control and let go of the areas where you don’t
• deal with the very worst part of being single – the ambiguity of whether you will or will not ever meet a man of your choosing
• think of singles as a societal phenomenon and consider if or how you want to participate in the upcoming major changes