It was a good week. Minda Honey wrote a lovely essay in The Los Angeles Review of Books called Empty Beds, Empty Wombs: Life Beyond The Blueprint, and I was delighted to see It’s Not You included, along with Kate Bolick’s Spinster and my good pal Meghan Daum’s anthology Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed.

Also, Briony Smith at FLARE published a smart and raw piece about being single called Why Being Single Sucks: What No One Wants to Talk About. I loved talking to Briony a couple of months ago was glad to find out she’s as charming in print as she is in person–and to see my friend Melanie Notkin, author of Otherhood, in the piece, too!

For including IT’S NOT YOU on these terrific lists:

Happy to be in such excellent company with Meghan Daum, Jen Doll, Diane Mapes, Kate Bolick, Rebecca Solnit, Elizabeth Gilbert, Karen Karbo and … Richard Yates!

Goodreads Good Minds Suggests: Meghan Daum’s Favorite Books About Living Life on Your Own Terms (Or What Happens When You Don’t) 

Bustle: 11 Literary Antidotes to Your Baby- and Wedding-Clogged Facebook Newsfeed

Dear Sara: I spent fourteen years with a woman, and afterwards she said it was only out of convenience and that she had found somebody else. I wasn’t very affectionate—you know, two jobs, but I loved her very much, and I can’t get her out of my head. How do I go forward?—A

Dear A: First, wow. That is a really hard thing to hear. It’s no surprise that you’re struggling to get past this.

But I’m glad you’re focused on moving forward. You have wisely recognized that much of the problem stems from a lot of pesky thoughts about your ex, thoughts that won’t leave your brain no matter how much you want them to.

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If you’re a single woman who has a brain and a backbone, you may suspect that these things are working against you in the dating arena. Maybe you read a dating guide that instructed you not to choose the restaurant or argue about politics. You need to let the man be the man! So hold off on the Yelp search and for heaven’s sake keep your opinions about Hillary Clinton to yourself!

Or maybe friends and family have gently suggested that you’re a tad too independent or intimidating. It’s not that they think that you shouldn’t have gotten that master’s degree or corporate-law job. Everybody’s super duper proud of what you’ve achieved! (more…)

When Lisa Phillips was thirty years old, she fell passionately in love with an unavailable man. Her crush began as a hopeful mental diversion, but quickly escalated into a kind of madness. At one point, she found herself standing outside the man’s door, knocking so loudly and insistently that when he finally opened it he was holding a baseball bat and threatening to call the police. (more…)

When Lea Thau was 38, her fiancé broke up with her while she was pregnant with their child. She subsequently became single for the first time in her adult life.

“I went from being engaged to be married and pregnant and looking for houses every Sunday to being eight months pregnant, alone in an apartment, discarded and devastated,” said Thau, in her astonishingly beautiful and raw podcast series Love Hurts.
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We all know that Valentine’s Day is a contrivance of greeting-card companies and florists. We all know that even those who have nice relationships aren’t really enjoying February 14, as there is nothing particularly romantic about eating overpriced heart-shaped ravioli in a restaurant full of unhappy couples on the coldest night of the year.

And yet, the holiday still manages to make many people like shit. (more…)