You can meet a partner at any stage of life, says Mariella Frostrup. But to hold onto someone, you need to deal with your insecurities first
The dilemma I am a 40-year-old chronically single woman. I have had a number of short relationships, but only three lasting more than a year and my longest was three years. I was recently dumped after a few months and it has greatly impacted my self-esteem. One issue was his long stretches of non-communication (four-day periods of non-response). Having experienced childhood abandonment (which I told him about), I could not accept this. Do I have to be perfect and ask for nothing to find a partner? Are my communication needs really too much? I don’t spend all my time searching for a guy or moping at not having one. I am positive and celebrate others and their happiness. But if loneliness is my fate, how do I learn to be OK with it? I have begun planning for a life alone. I’ve bought an apartment and contributed to a retirement plan. I have accepted I will never be a mother. Yet, I am ashamed of how much the lack of a partner still saddens me. I am so scared that the last time I had sex is really the last time.
Mariella replies At last a subject I’m qualified in. First, be careful what you wish for. I know plenty of women in the opposite situation who’d be delighted to find themselves unfettered again. I was just a year younger than you when, at 39, after a similar dating history, I met my now husband and went on to have two children in my early 40s. It’s information I offer you to assuage the cloud of impending doom that you’re currently engulfed by.
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