This post was inspired by Laurie Flynn’s beautiful piece, On Not Needing, But Wanting, not because our stories are the same, but because her honesty made me brave enough to tell my own.
There’s a difference between not needing anyone and not wanting anyone. For a long time, I hid behind one because the other felt too exposing to say out loud.
I’ve been single for more than twenty-two years. I want you to sit with that for a moment, because I still have to, sometimes. Twenty-two years of carrying my own weight, making my own decisions, soothing my own sadness, fixing my own problems, going to sleep alone and waking up alone and building an entire life, a genuinely beautiful life, without a partner beside me.
And for a long time, that was right. After my divorce in 2004, I didn’t want my energy split. My daughter was little, she needed me completely, and I wanted to give her that. So I poured everything I had into being her mother, into creating safety, into rebuilding something that felt stable and good and ours, so a partner never became the priority.
But here is the truth I’ve been circling for a while now, the one I keep writing around and then deleting: I don’t need anyone, but I do want love.
Real love. Real companionship. Real closeness. Not almost, not potential, not one foot in and one foot out, and definitely not words without movement. Not a long-distance ache that gets dressed up as devotion because the other person isn't brave enough to make it real.
I want an actual relationship, and saying that out loud, at nearly forty-nine, feels more vulnerable than I was prepared for.
My first real love story began in 1998. And if I’m honest, it felt like something out of a Bollywood film, which is both romantic and, in retrospect, telling.
It was love at first sight at my brother’s wedding in India. He married this young man’s sister, so suddenly our families were woven together, and there we were, in the middle of all that colour and celebration and intensity, falling for each other. I lived in Norway. He lived in Italy.
We were together, in our hearts at least, for just over three years. But when I look back now, what strikes me most is how little of it was ever lived in real life. We saw each other only a handful of times around the wedding period. That was it. Neither of us ever got on a plane and truly chose each other in action. Our families were against the marriage. We fought for years, hoping the resistance would soften, hoping love would eventually win, because surely love was supposed to win.
It didn’t, and eventually, we both ended up in arranged marriages. Mine ended after a year and a half; his didn’t.
And even now, there is something quietly heartbreaking to me about how much longing can exist between two people who never quite become brave enough, free enough, or supported enough to actually live the life they imagined together because it went against societal norms.
Then, around 2009 or 2010, there was someone else. A family friend. Familiar. Comfortable. Someone I felt a genuine connection with. By then, I had been living in the UK for a couple of years. And once again, I found myself emotionally attached to someone who wasn’t truly available.
He was married. He told me things weren’t going well. He said things that kept hope alive. He said he loved me, and I waited.
Not in the dramatic, standing-by-the-window sense. I still lived my life. I raised my daughter. I kept going. I built things. I functioned. But emotionally, some part of me was paused, still open in his direction, still waiting, quietly, to be chosen.
For thirteen years.
I had to stop when I typed that.
Thirteen years.
We only met once during all that time. Once, despite both of us living in the UK, and if I’m being completely honest with myself, I can’t even call it a relationship. Situationship is probably the more accurate word. A long-distance emotional attachment built on familiarity, hope, words, and waiting.
Even after his divorce, nothing truly happened. He said he loved me, again and again, but not enough to choose me in any real, grounded, embodied way. Not enough to move toward me. Not enough to build something. Not enough to risk anything.
And eventually, I let go. That sentence sounds clean and wise, but it wasn’t.
Letting go of someone you have emotionally carried for years is not tidy; it’s grief. It’s embarrassing. It’s anger and tenderness and humiliation and relief, all at once. It’s finally admitting that what you hoped would become real simply isn’t going to become real.
And underneath all of that, there is another truth that feels almost absurd to say: The only in-person relationship I have ever had was my marriage. And it was horrible.
The two times I truly fell in love were both long-distance. Both half-lived. Both are more emotional than embodied. Both are rooted more in longing than in shared daily life.
So when I say I want love now, I am not saying I want more waiting; I mean, I want the actual thing.
Companionship. Tenderness. The intimacy of shared ordinary life. Someone to talk to at the end of the day. Someone who is simply, solidly there. I want to feel seen, heard, held and most importantly, chosen, not in sentiment, but in action. I want to fall in love in real life, not just in my own head and heart.
I want the kind of love my twenty-five-year-old self probably assumed would have arrived by now.
And yes, there is something humbling about admitting that, because on paper, I have done extraordinarily well on my own. I have built a life from scratch in a new country. Raised my daughter on my own. Won multiple awards and had countless media appearances. I've become strong, capable, and resilient. I know how to hold myself. I know how to survive without leaning on anyone.
But survival and desire are not the same thing. Independence and intimacy are not opposites. And not needing someone is not the same as not wanting to be loved.
My daughter turns twenty-two in a few months. For so long, my life revolved, quite rightly, around being her mother first. Present. Steady. Making sure she was held.
But now I feel another part of me stretching awake, saying softly but clearly: “What about me?” Not selfishly, but humanly. In that quiet, grown-woman way that midlife tends to bring, the way it eventually asks you to stop performing contentment and start telling yourself the truth.
I have built something beautiful, and I would love to share it with someone. I don’t want to do life alone forever. I don’t want to grow old alone. I don’t want to keep mistaking capability for preference; just because I can do life alone doesn’t mean I want to. I want a partnership.
And maybe there is something quietly brave about saying that at this age. After all this time. After so many years of not asking for it, not pursuing it, not making it a priority.
Maybe the bravest thing is simply refusing to make yourself smaller than your own longing.
So here I am… Saying it out loud:
I want love. I want my person.
And I hope he finds his way to me soon, ideally before we’re both eighty and arguing over which supplements to take. And honestly? I think he’s just being stubborn. Probably too proud to ask for directions. Probably standing somewhere with his ego firmly intact, refusing to admit he might be slightly lost.
But I’m here, and for the first time in a long time, I’m not just making peace with this truth privately, I’m saying it out loud.
And that feels like something.
If this is your season
If reading this has made something in you whisper “Me too”, and you know you’re ready to stop circling the same ache on your own, there are a few ways I can support you more deeply.
The Midlife Reset is a gentle place to begin if you want to reconnect with yourself and your next chapter with more clarity, care, and intention.
And if you’re craving more personalised support, you can explore coaching to see what kind of support feels right for you.
You may also find comfort and insight in my conversation with Shireen Noor, psychoanalytic psychotherapist and licensed couples therapist, where we explore relationships, emotional patterns, and the tender work of understanding ourselves more deeply.
Member Content: Join The Midlife Circle to Continue Reading
The full version of this piece goes deeper into what it means to move from self-protection into genuine openness. How to tell the difference between longing and real availability. And what it actually looks like to want partnership, without abandoning or diminishing the life you have already built.
Inside, I share:
Journaling prompts for love, desire, heartbreak, and self-honesty
A reflection exercise on the difference between being chosen in words and being chosen in action
A gentle practice for naming what kind of partnership you actually want now
The Midlife Love Inventory, a way to honour your past without continuing to live inside it
No shame, no spiritual bypassing, no pretending you should be above wanting love, just truth, tenderness, and the kind of clarity that only comes with time.
