Overly Serious Divorced Woman Can't Figure Out Why She's Single, Take 4000

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I became a single mother seven years ago. I ended my marriage because ... I wanted to be my authentic self. I wanted more.

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I started to feel as if I was no longer what a growing number of men were looking for.

Whether they were 28 or 58, they all claimed to want someone who “doesn’t take herself too seriously.”

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I’m going to keep being intense and wordy and sometimes massively stressed and a little unhinged. Every woman I know is similarly complicated. We’re not doing anything wrong by taking ourselves seriously. What a strange and anti-feminist request anyway.

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The other night I went on a date with a 30-year-old man. He was a neuroscientist with six pet rats (yes, that he saved from the lab). He kept veering from serious conversation, such as about his family and his last relationship, which ended catastrophically. Instead, he showed me videos of him scratching his pet rats’ bellies. He was trying to be unserious. Truly, I just wanted to hear about neuroscience and his heartache.

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Still, I’d rather do it all alone and be all that I am every day than wear a mask or shave off my rough edges. Whoever stays can stay. The rest can keep searching for the myth.

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