I hope you enjoy this brief excerpt from my new book: OTHERHOOD: Modern Women Finding a New Kind of Happiness from a chapter entitled: Where Are the Suitable Men? PART 3.  To read PART 1, click here. To read PART 2, click here.


A few months ago, I had a conversation with a married man about dating in New York. He got married at age forty.

“There just aren’t enough age-appropriate, eligible men in New York City,” I responded when he asked me why I wasn’t dating anyone.

“Maybe you should date the short, fat, bald men you are overlooking,” he said.

My heart sank. I realized he meant him, back when he was single. I didn’t want to reveal to him that I have dated my share of short men, bald men, and overweight men and many variations thereof. I never turned down a man because he was any of those things. But all the men I dated who were in that group had something this man didn’t have when I first met him when he was single. They had confidence. Confidence is one of the most appealing qualities of the men I date. It’s not cockiness, which is confidence that is overplayed and probably masking insecurity. This man never asked me out.

The women I have spoken with may regret saying no to a suitor they did not believe suited them a long time ago, but most are happily not married to the men they thought they might marry at one time. The women of the Otherhood want to be married. They want to be mothers. But they don’t want to settle for an average relationship.

And don’t get these women wrong. It’s not because they don’t understand how hard relationships are, although they’re told this often—usually in the way someone might make a point to a child about understanding more about X when they’re grown. It’s actually because women of the Otherhood do know how difficult relationships are that they don’t want to settle for a relationship with someone they don’t love. They know that with all the ups and downs, decisions and plans interrupted, for richer or poorer, through sickness and in health, for all the reasons couples break up (even the ones we all thought would make it) that if you don’t have love, you have nothing to fight for.

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Excerpt from Otherhood: Modern Women Finding a New Kind of Happiness by Melanie Notkin. With permission from Seal Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2014.