Of course, there are many popular books and television shows that detail the lives of such women, but in those stories adorable men constantly approach the heroines in parks and bus stops and ask them to dinner. The sitcom single woman is never alone for long. She skips from one man to the next, changing boyfriends as frequently as she does purses. My friends and I had various dates and mini-relationships, but mostly we were alone.

While many of us watched and enjoyed these shows — and didn’t entirely mind when people remarked that our lives were “just like” the protagonists’ — the stereotype they created of the over-30, man-hunting singleton cast a shadow over us. Being an unattached woman who would rather not be somehow meant you were a nitwit, a bubblehead who had few concerns beyond shopping, pedicures and “Will he call?” My friends and I had no interest in shopping or pedicures, but that didn’t stop us from feeling wildly embarrassed that we longed for love.

Admitting that you wanted a husband — much less that you were distraught you didn’t have one — seemed like a betrayal of feminism. We were supposed to be better than this. (Not that any actual feminists said it was so awful to want a relationship. The e-mails we received from NOW and Planned Parenthood focused on reproductive rights and equal pay, not dating and marriage.)

Professing a need for love could also be taken as evidence that you weren’t ready for it. One December night when I was having drinks with a married male friend, he grew exasperated with my (admittedly annoying) complaints about having to spend yet another holiday season without a partner. “Sara, in almost every way you have it together,” he said, “but on this one topic you turn into this ridiculous girl!”

Like single women everywhere, I had bought into the idea that the problem must be me, that there was some essential flaw — arrogance, low self-esteem, fear of commitment — that needed to be fixed. I needed to be fixed.

As a freelance writer, I couldn’t afford a good therapist, but my job did give me access to some of the country’s best mental-health professionals. As I wrote articles on first dates and break-ups, I interviewed psychology professors and therapists, shamelessly peppering the conversation with anecdotes from my own life. I was trying to get at the root of the problem — for the benefit of womankind, and for myself.