And although I liked the collection, I must admit a lot of the poems did not really get to me, and I found it difficult to connect at times. If they have friends and family and are not in a chronic state of loneliness, I see no reason to assume pathology. And you start to think about support issues: who’s going to take care of them as they proceed into their relatively older age? Dear Carolyn: I’m a 44-year-old divorced woman looking for a committed relationship, and I want to get remarried. And more of them are male; 28% of 40-year-old men have never married, versus 22% of women the same age.

I worked full time and I had an ass of a husband who still expected me to take care of bills and the home. Race and ethnicity: Black 40-year-olds were much more likely to have never married than Hispanic, White and Asian 40-year-olds. If I were still with him, I would have nothing and still be cooking dinner every night, taking care of his snot-nosed kids, when I wasn't in Iraq.

this collection was not only a pleasure to re-read, due to how it makes me feel so seen and heard, despite its disturbing elements, it is also creative in its use of different styles to explore the theme.

I am also very comfortable with myself, I also agree with you that it comes with age, to truly know who you are, and I believe it's a journey through life. Hey, all of us want to think that about ourselves – let’s just say for argument’s sake that it’s true! But I know of a litany of guys who act like they're God's gift to women when they're actually uneducated bums looking for their next conquest. And if any or all of these are speculative assumptions, the reader may be certain that the repeated cries are declaimed in anger at endemic forms of abuse, often practiced with proprietorial insouciance, like the man who ‘brushes a drop of water’ from the thigh of a teenager on the log flume.

The truth is, I knew who would be best for me and as much as I wanted to marry, I wasn't willing to risk a bad marriage by compromising on essentials. It is possible to have a fulfilling relationship with a man that can last longer than most of today'so averages marriages (5yrs) without having a piece of paper to say so. I love the times in these poems – such as the moment in the first poem when a list of former loves gives way to the extraordinary lyric line ‘all we are to each other is ghosts’ – when, without turning away for a second from any of life’s realities, experience is rendered completely beautiful. Here’s my true confession: It took many years of studying single people before I ever looked up the answer to that question.