Thanks for your reply, and for the record I am single, never been married. As you stated, “…everybody wants to be loved”, but I’m not willing to compromise who I am as an individual for the sake of “being loved”. My father always told my sisters and I to “never show a man more happiness than he shows you, and I am a firm believer of that. I didn’t write the article from a judgemental standpoint, but moreso an informative one, to let women know that they don’t have to “settle”. I don’t know your friend or her situation, nor am I passing judegement, but I refuse to have a “man of the moment”, when I know at any “moment” he might not be there. I would love to be married one day, but I’m not going to exchange vows in “exchange” for the physical presence of a man, because I “don’t want to be alone”. You’re right, “things in life don’t always happen as planned…” As I tell my friends, in life “shhh” happens, and there’s nothing we can do about it except pick up the pieces and put them back where they belong. People make mistakes all the time; either we learn from it or get burned by it! The choice is theirs! Thanks for your input, I really appreciate the feedback!

I would be really curious to know if you are single or if you have been married for years. Why am I raising this question is because there is a big difference. I hear females who have been in a stable relationship for years and criticise others who ended up with the wrong man, got pregnant and so on. It is too easy to be judgemental when someone has been for decades in a stable relationship. Among my friends, only one has been with the same man for almost twenty years. She was criticising not too long ago a woman who became pregnant at the of age 35 with her man of the moment. I didn’t say anything to her but I felt she did not have the authority to judge her because she does not know what it feels like to be alone for years. Her sister called me once during the Holidays and was crying. She did not have to explain why she was sad, it was obvious to me seeing that she was alone for quite a while. I just listened to her pain. Her sister who is my friend has no clue about the pain of her own flesh and blood! There are many other examples I could give like the one I just described. To finish, things in life do not always happen as planned but everybody wants to be loved.