"But here I am -- 55 years old, a spinster long past my sell-by date, no kids -- and I haven't had sex in a decade and a half."

"It's my own fault, I know. I'm picky. Casual sex doesn't do it for me. (I've always thought I had to be in love in order to make love.) I regard men with ambivalence, with alternate longing and fear. I've grown accustomed to being alone."

Writes Kit Naylor in Salon. Via Metafilter, where the best comment might be:

Once you've passed a certain age -- older than it used to be, but still not old enough -- it doesn't matter how much you love yourself and rejoice in being a whole, warm, wonderful woman. You can't help but see that as a person, you're terrific, but as a girlfriend-unit with optional wife-upgrade port, you're unmarketable. The thing to do is to stop reading men-vs.-women lifestyle journalism, take charge of singleness (like one Miss Florence King) and stop expecting that life owes you a reward for being a pretty, pretty princess inside.

It says she's marketing a book about how to enjoy living alone, but I'm getting depressed just thinking about it.