"There's no denying that to embrace being a woman alone isn't easy. But as Falk makes clear in this useful and appealing manual, it's inaccurate, unfair, and unhealthy to equate being alone with being unwanted or a failure. On My Own offers plenty of evidence for Falk's central thesis that 'aloneness is an opportunity, a state brimming with potentiality, with resources for renewed life.' Falk offers plenty of material to help even women with partners to understand the distinction between being abandoned and choosing to be alone, and to appreciate the healing and nurturing benefits of solitude."

—Publishers Weekly zoning out on old movies. She slept on the couch the next night, too, and the next. With Sam gone, she found herself listening to the silence. It's odd, she thought. I've been by myself a thousand times when Sam was out. Only now it's different. Before, I was alone, but not really. I was waiting for him. Now I'm not waiting for anyone. She started to sob, and finally the pain and hurt came pouring out. She felt frightened and confused. This didn't seem real, but of course it was. He was gone and he wouldn't be coming back.

     Lisa is a set designer who first came to see me when her "honeymoon" with Sam was over, and she was struggling to understand how a relationship so magical, so light and luminous, could have begun to collect the dust of ordinary existence. She wanted to be wanted again. She wanted Sam to feel her longing and respond to her longing with his own. In her heart of hearts, she wanted to hold on to the rosy candlelight glow of romance, rather than have to deal with the bright, sometimes glaring day-to-day life with another person. And who could blame her? To be spun off earth and float above it for a while is exhilarating. But real love must take root in the soil of reality; otherwise, it can't last or modulate into deeper form. Lisa and Sam's relationship didn't have such durability.
     Still, for Lisa—and almost every woman I know—the problem is     (2 of 5)