Thank you for this, and I especially appreciate the anecdote at the beginning, because far too many people criticize late-30s single women and blame us for our situation. I can relate to "Raya." I'd be considered "a catch" in a lot of respects, and it's been this way since I was young. I've also always been a very nurturing, forgiving, patient, self-aware person — i.e., not emotionally bombastic — and I was the designated driver more than the partier in my younger years too. I could go on and on about all the derisive, demeaning, "why she's still single" stereotypes that I don't fill. But what happened to me over and over again in my younger years is that the (good, not "bad"!) guys I liked were afraid to commit to me, based on baggage from their past... so we missed our chances, and they eventually mustered up the courage to deal with their baggage and dare to love someone else... only to come back many years later and tell me I had never been lacking, it was never my fault, and they simply had issues. In other words, men apparently placed me on SO high a pedestal that they were afraid to let themselves fall for me. So instead, they set me aside... and thus I have reached my late-30s alone. (Despite what the MRAs and incels might say about why women my age haven't found a husband yet.)

Do I love myself? Yes. Does that erase my very human desire to have a partnership? No.

Again — thanks for writing this.