Happy 4th of July to everyone!  I hope you're planning something special.  This is the time of year when I get most nostalgic for my childhood, when the Fourth of July seemed like the longest and most exciting day of the year (after Christmas, of course).

Afternoon kicked off the Independence Day parade, where my brother and I would race out and collect candy from beneath the hooves of beribboned horses.  Later my family would have a bonfire on the beach and eat s'mores and light off fireworks on the smooth sand.  When darkness fell, the real fireworks display started.  We snuggled beneath old sleeping bags, and I remember watching the reflections of light on my parents' faces.  The rare occasion of all of us spending a day together was just as important for me as the parade and fireworks.

All that changed when I became a teenager.  I became too "cool" to collect candy.  Instead of watching the parade with my parents, I wandered up and down the parade route with my best friend to watch for cute out-of-town boys and hope I'd be noticed.  At the beach that evening I met up with school friends and only returned to my family when it grew dark.  And on a secluded corner of the beach one year, I had my first real kiss.

Looking back now, I feel a bit sad to remember just how important popularity and success with boys was to me – and all of us, really – at that time in my life.  Like most teenagers, I believed that my social status with my peers was more important than time with my family.  If someone would have told me that what boys thought of me didn't matter, that I was going to be successful in life whether or not I got noticed by boys, and that what I would miss most someday would not be the social status but rather that precious time with family, I would have thought they were crazy.

It is so easy to forget what's really valuable and important in life.  We may have friends and family that love us, but instead it's tempting to focus on our lack of a guy.  We may have wonderful activities to share with people we care about, but instead we find ourselves tempted to look for opportunities where there are single men.

Sometimes it's nice to stop looking and just enjoy where we are in life.  It's nice to remember that our success in life isn't judged on whether we have a boyfriend/partner/husband or not.  It's nice to remember that we can do or be anything we want without being penalized for being single.

Our civilization has gone a long way in the past fifty years.  Every day, women around the world get more opportunities to fulfill their dreams.  We know that a loving, lasting relationship should – and will – be part of our lives, but it isn't and won't be our entire life.  Life is much bigger than that.

This Independence Day, I'd like to ask you to remember one of the greatest blessings of all: our ability to take charge of our lives and change what we don't like.  It's a blessing bestowed to all of us.  No matter how impossible something seems, or how great the odds, we still have the opportunity to do something about it.

Let your life reflect conscious choices.  You don't have to be noticed by boys, get lots of attention, or have the perfect boyfriend to be successful.  You get to decide what will make you successful.  What will you create?

Thanks to everyone who entered our Readers Story competition.  Congratulations to Noël Christianson, our first place winner!  Her determination not to lower her standards in her search for love is a valuable reminder for all of us.

"Will Date for Food" 

by Noël Christianson

"Mom, you live like there’s no tomorrow." Obviously, my son was dizzy from seeing me fold clothes, watch CNN with the phone to my ear while adjusting leg weights for final reps. I never did take living for granted. My mind’s eye carries along a rhythmic hour glass, dribbling sand with every heartbeat. It’s my reminder of this world’s short gig. Really, if I have any excesses, blame my Dad. He had a way of delivering quips that made you think. My "life’s short" attitude began incubating lap-side when he said, "You know, you start dying the moment you are born."

Whether it was his voice or teacher’s demeanor he dragged home each night, his dinner time talks made you listen. Truth had a place at our table. But life with a teacher is not always easy. At home there are no recess bells to free you from the lecture sure to come over any topic. Teachers are well-read and are trained to explain everything. There is a sure-fire system, a root to the problem, a cause and effect and historical reference to all of life’s foibles. I now know to settle in real comfy when talking with Dad.

None of his children are complaining about those dinner times. Mom scurried around tending to boiling pots and our needs. The warmth from that kitchen, conversation and good times jelled our sense of self, preparing us for the future. Unfortunately my new cynicism causes me to peer suspiciously through the clouds of steam those meals brought. Little did I know, my Truth would be "This ain’t the way your family life is gonna be."

On the Eve of my divorce anniversary (is there a Hallmark card for that?) I continue to analyze what went wrong. My sister and I share the common bond of not having good luck with men. Goodluckwithmen. It sounds like a Bavarian cookie. Well, these cookies crumbled all right. On the outside, our marriages looked pretty good but the real stuffing showed up when lifelong promises were tossed aside, fell and splattered. After kicking around the pieces through therapy, self-help books and Anything Anonymous meetings, Sis, I think I have the answer. Those Great Depression boys are the best.

Our parents talked often of The Depression. Hard Times was the hub of their adolescent lives and the spokes from that era radiated into their futures. We heard stories of hard work, no work, no food, big fear. It seemed grimy. The Dirty Thirties. Families struggled to survive – together. Did my relationship-sensitive ears hear through the bleakest days of this century there was commitment?

But as my Dad would say, "Things could be worse."

At that time, he did have it worse. Orphaned in the middle of The Depression, he later lucked out to marry my mom who held the same belief in family covenant. They survived The Depression, never quite shaking off the residue, causing them to cling to Family and Faith. Strong ethics helped assuage their new Gripes of Wrath: illness, clamoring kids, penniless days.

So maybe I have been going through this husband-hunting thing all wrong. I could run a personal ad looking for some down-trodden war refugee who escaped famine, floods, a POW camp, hungry for hearth and home. Beaten down from survival uncertainties, he would be content to have me clang a tin cup along the boards to announce dinnertime and serve the man some gruel. Add a warm bath and he would think he was in heaven. Repeat after me, "I will learn commitment."

16^th century George Herbert spouted, "One Father is more than 100 school masters." Think of the mathematical ramifications the impact this father-school master’s talks had on us through the decades. We girls listened. It’s been challenging for us to pursue relationships without testing and grading each man against our standards without lowering the curve. So when I gnash my teeth in frustration over the men I meet who aren’t strong, smart or in any way committed to family, I just blame my Dad.

I'd like to ask all you women out there: what are the very best books for single women?

The reason I ask is because I came across this nifty little book while browsing the web.  It's called Even God is Single, So Stop Giving Me a Hard Time by Karen Salmansohn.  I haven't seen the book myself, but now I want a copy!

I love books that make me feel good about being single.  They're a great antidote to all the romances and chick lit I have on my shelves. (Yes, I must confess, I love Nora Roberts!)

Do any of you have books that you're recommend for single friends that celebrate the wonder and powerful of being absolutely independently footloose and fancy free? 

Sarah forwarded me the following consultation she did for a member of 000Relationships.com, and I felt that it was so beautiful that I asked her if I could share it with you here.  [Parts have been edited from the original consultation.]

Waking up and realizing you are running out of time to find a soulmate is a scenario that is not to uncommon for a number of women in their mid to late 30s. In fact, it happens all the time. But while this happens all the time, I am continually baffled why this happens. Where in society or in your own individual programming does it say that in order to have achieved you have to have a man? You want a man, yes, but outwardly believing that you are running out of time puts you in a destructive mindset in which you project your impatience and expectation upon others.

Your first step is to believe that it will happen. It will happen. And, in believing that you will find someone, you will start to live your reality. You may have been hurt in your previous relationships. That’s understandable. But you have also probably loved and been loved in your past relationships, too. Which part of your past do you choose to bring with you? The hurt, or the love?

Each relationship you are in offers you the opportunity to meet a different man and learn something more about yourself and the type of man you are looking for. Trying to recreate your past is not going to work. We need to stop comparing our future relationships to our past ones and have faith that each man we meet is going to be even better than the last.

My recommendation is to have some patience and enjoy living in the present. Enjoy each man you meet and each experience you have, and look upon each experience as bringing you closer to your destiny. The key to finding love again is to change your perspective and be in a position where you can understand and appreciate it when it comes. It may not be the consuming lust of your teenage years, but it may be packaged differently.

Focus on the journey, not the destination. 

You are meant to be single right now.

What a strange thing to say! Isn't our natural state to be in a relationship, and when we're single we're … well, lacking?

Of course not.  That isn't true at all.  But as a woman I am still very conscious that all the models of happiness I see in society – from Hollywood movies to family pressures – involve being matched up with a man who is one's soulmate. (One's soulmate, of course, has to be a man according to this ideal.  It can't be a female friend, or a mentor.)

Wait a moment!

Although many of us enlightened women like to think that we celebrate our single status and desire a relationship as an extension of our happiness, rather than the purpose and cause of it, we still respond to the cultural programming that tells us that we are incomplete if we don't have a man.

That same cultural programming shames the woman when her man cheats.  That same cultural programming blames the woman for not holding the relationship together.

Although we know in our minds that it's all a bunch of baloney, I don't think that there are many of us who can honestly state that we don't respond to those beliefs on a heart level.  Emotionally, we still feel shamed if we can't "get" a man.  We feel shamed if he leaves us.  We feel that it's our fault, somehow.

Our cultural programming is so powerful that many of us end up seeking out a relationship just because all of our female friends in relationships seem so happy.  We want to have what they have.

Yet what if you told yourself that, unlike them, you were meant to be single right now?  You were single because there was something that you had to do.  God is giving you the chance to be on your own because He wants you to learn something, or to develop a new skill, or move to the next level spiritually … and being single is the only way you can do it.

Wouldn't you want to know why you were single, and then take advantage of it?

Very few of us spend any time examining our belief systems about what it means to be single.  Socially we're told that being single is merely the limbo period between relationships.  But is it?

What if you were meant to be single right now?

What if it was your job to figure out what you're supposed to be doing with your single time and doing it?

Wouldn't you feel a lot more okay about being single?

Wouldn't you feel a greater sense of meaning and purpose in your life right now, rather than waiting for the time in which you have a partner?

You aren't single because you can't get a man.  You aren't single because you're not enough.  You aren't single because you're bad at dating.

You're single for a reason … and it's your job to find out that reason.

Once you do, then you'll have completed the reason for which you were single.  And then, magically, you'll find that relationship opportunities open all around you.

Does that sound too airy-fairy?  Perhaps.  But it can also make your single life much more wonderful and meaningful than an endless search for a partner.

By now, most of you know that my colleague Sarah Paul (author of "How to Be Irresistible to Men") is having a baby!  We've known in the office for quite some time.  🙂 She's just been glowing.  This is definitely where she's wanted to be in her life, and I know that she and Jason are going to be fantastic parents.

Many of my friends have been having babies recently.  It's that time in people's lives.  Five years ago, everyone was getting married except for me.  I was too busy traveling the world, having adventures, meeting tons of fantastic men, and enjoying every minute of it.  I didn't want to settle down; I had too much to do and see!

Now, I've finally reached the stage in my life where settling down appeals to me.  I've done most of what I wanted to do in my life, seen most of the places I've wanted to see, and staying in one place doesn't sound too shabby at all!

I'm not yet at the stage where Sarah's at.  She's been so happy with Jason that having a baby is the natural next step in her life.  All the inconveniences of being pregnant — who ever thought that buttoning up a winter coat could be such a chore! — are simply amusing events that she laughs off.  She keeps focused on the future.

The one part of it that saddens me — a purely selfish sorrow — is that when Sarah and Jason become new parents, they won't have time to do all the things we used to do together.  I'm not the only single woman who finds that as her friends have children, social events become less and less frequent.  Children change everything.  For my married friends, their lives are richer.  For me, I feel a small sense of loss for the time that we'll no longer spend together.

I went to a barbecue recently with another single friend.  We sat in the garden with paper plates balanced on our knees and watched as kids played recklessly with cardboard boxes, sitting in them, putting them over their heads, and falling over them.  Parents kept an eye out from the porch to make sure that no one hurt themselves.

Every so often some of the parents would detach themselves and come talk to us, shaking their heads in amusement.  I think they envied what they saw as our single, carefree lifestyle.  But as my friend said, "They've got the real prize.  They have partners who love them and children they love.  What they see in us is a false memory of their single days, without any of the loneliness or wasted nights in bars hoping to meet someone."

It is difficult being single and getting older … watching your friends marry, then have children.  But there's nothing wrong with being different from everyone else.  A male friend told me recently, "All of my friends are getting married.  I'm dating this girl that I really like, and I know that she wants to get married.  But I'm not ready yet.  Am I just being selfish?  Maybe I should just take the plunge and do 'the responsible thing.'  But then what if I regret it later?"

I hope that no matter where you are in life, love and romance isn't on your agenda simply because all of your friends have boyfriends, partners, or husbands.  Pressuring yourself to get married by a certain age or to have children by a certain age can cause havoc with your love life.  Give yourself a break and believe that the universe has great things in store for you.  There are so many men out there right now who will make great friends, even if they don't end up as boyfriends, so get out there and meet them for the pure joy of it, not because you expect something.

As for me, I know that Sarah's life is beautiful and perfect just as it is .. and so is my life.  We're both exactly where we're supposed to be. 

I didn't recognize him at first.  We walked into the hostel and glanced in the bar on our way up to the room.  There were a couple of guys drinking there.  "Is that your friend?" Daryn asked me.

I looked, but their backs were to us.  "I don't know.  I said I'd meet him at his room."

We went up to the second story of the hostel and knocked, but no one was in the room.  "Maybe they were in the bar," Daryn said.  So we trooped down again.

As we walked into the bar, the first guy in a white striped shirt turned around and smiled.  "Well, hello!"

Yep, it was him.

It's so surreal to meet someone that you had a fling with, years later, in a different country, when both of your lives are so different.  I'd met Ben (not his real name) back when I was working in a winery, sorting grapes for the harvest.  He was full of energy and enthusiasm for the wine industry, and he introduced me to the artsy wine bar scene.  At the time he was living in a fantastic house with a hot tub on the deck and a game room complete with pool table, wine cellar, and wide-screen television, where I watched Sex and the City for the first time.

Even though we only knew each other for a few months, I was always grateful to him for showing me what big city life could be like.  We zipped through Portland in his yellow convertible and browsed organic vegetables, Doc Marten shoes, Nike pedometers.  The city seemed full of possibilities, potential, and fascinating people I had yet to meet.

Meeting him here, so far from home, brought back memories of Portland.  It seemed strange not to remember our relationship as vividly as I remembered the city itself, its feel, its energy.  What I felt wasn't nostalgia for him but rather for the sense of possibility I felt at that time and place: the culture of youth, the celebration of being alive, and the promise of bright careers ahead.

So many of my past relationships have been like that.  When I think back on them with nostalgia, what I remember most isn't him and me, but rather the feelings I had at that point in my life.  For example, when I think of my first love, I remember how excited and aware I felt as I experienced the beauty of those emotions for the first time.  Yet the years have faded his face in my memory.

I realize that my journey through love has not been a journey from lover to lover, but rather a journey through myself.  Each relationship has taught me new ways of appreciating life.  My romantic history is not one of winning and losing but rather of seeing through ever-renewed eyes.

Each relationship expands my sense of who I can be as I learn to enjoy his hobbies, understand his world view, take pleasure in his tastes, respond to his rhythms.  I'm not leaving behind my self: I'm becoming greater than I was before.

If we limit our lives to what we like, to how we think, to what we want, then we're keeping ourselves constricted in a tight cage of identity.  Loving gives us the gift of opening up our cages and allowing us to dissolve our singularity into something greater.

Even when he leaves us, or we leave him, we carry part of him with us: the way he thought, his mannerisms, his favorite books or music or shops.  We can appreciate more of life because he shared his world with us.

Yet, last night, I didn't share these thoughts with Ben.  Instead, we chatted and drank and caught up with stories until it was time to go home.  I promised to give him a call next time I was in Portland, and he promised he'd be back this way again.

And instead of thinking about him on the way home, I simply thought of Portland and how wonderful it will be to experience the city again. 

Is time running out for us?

So many women I talk to, no matter how young they are, have the sense of a ticking hourglass.  They feel, deep inside, that if they don't find the right man soon to marry and settle down, the bloom of their youth will have passed and all the single men will have been taken.

It is such a deep rooted fear for all of us.  In the most primal regions of our hearts, we believe that we will die if we don't find love.

It is only very recent in human history that men and women have been able to live alone.  In indigenous societies, complementary male and female roles are vital for survival.  Without a man to hunt, there is no food.  Without a woman to tend to the home, there is no safe place to return to.  A woman with no man has to rely on the goodwill of others to survive.

Even though we now eat take-out instead of deer, come home to houses instead of shelters, and wash our clothes with machines instead of river rocks, we are not that far removed from our ancestors.  Thousands of years of human history cannot be overwritten in a few generations.  We were meant to pair up.  It is such a strong conviction that mere sexual need cannot explain it.

For most of us today, marriage is a choice.  We make a living on our own without much difficulty.  We don't need men.  As a result, we can afford to be picky.  We can afford to wait until the perfect partner comes along.

Yet we still feel that ticking clock.  We feel the need to find love and partner with someone.  Even though marriage is a choice, even though the divorce rates are sky-high, we STILL get married in overwhelming numbers.  Most of us will marry at least once during our lifetime.

We need marriage.  Though some believe that marriage is merely a way to rein in promiscuous behavior and control reproduction, it is too widespread as a human behavior (in nearly all societies across history) to be merely a method of social control.

Harville Hendrix, author of Getting the Love You Want, believes that marriage has a crucial part to play in modern society.  Through marriage, he believes, we heal one another.  No other relationship teaches us so much about ourselves and being better human beings.  Commitment is not constriction or constraint: rather, it disciplines us to resolve our conflicts, express ourselves freely without fear of rejection, and increases intimacy beyond what is possible in a de facto relationship.

As much as we'd like to believe that we can live without men, we know we can't.  Masculine energy balances us.  Men need us to love them; we need them to love.

One of men's deep-seated fears is that women will decide they no longer need men.  Men cannot survive without women.  In fact, marriage is so healthy for men that they will live longer, stay healthier, and even earn more money as a husband than as a bachelor.

Men adore women who fully and warm-heartedly admit that they need men.  Although "needy" has become a dirty word, too many of us are tempted to the other extreme.  We try to be so independent that we don't leave the smallest space for a man in our lives.  When we do date, we suppress our needs so that we appear as un-needy as possible.  As a result, the men in our lives feel emasculated.  They feel that they can do nothing for us that we can't do for ourselves.  In many cases, they end up leaving us for a woman who is much more childlike and needy for his affections.

Can you admit to yourself that you need men without feeling ashamed or embarrassed?  I am not asking you to admit that you need "a man" — just that you need men.  It's not hard.  Yet it's amazing how that admission brings such a feeling of shame to the modern woman.

I love men.  I love them as friends and colleagues, as boys and old men, as strangers and lovers.  I am glad that men share our world with us.  Aren't you?

When I first started working at 000Relationships.com, I wondered who the women were who wrote in to thank Sarah Paul (author of "How to Be Irresistible to Men") from all over the world.  Were they teenagers wanting to have greater success with boys?  Were they women in their thirties getting ready to marry?  Or were they like my female friends: lovely, intelligent women of all ages and ethnicities who wanted to understand their relationship with men better?

Before I came to 000Relationships.com, I finished a master's degree in writing in the UK.  I'd spent my last summer there living in a flat with an English friend, Eve.  Eve was a mother, university student, and recent divorcé.  Mid-life, she was starting over again.  Yet instead of feeling filled with fear for being on her own for the first time since she was a teenager, Eve embraced her new life.  She tackled classes with the same youthful spirit she employed playing with her children.  She dated, went clubbing, started the gym, and worked with the elderly in her spare time.

The sheer amount of activity in her life staggered me.  I'd established a simple habit of working on my thesis, working out, and seeing friends, and that was enough for me.  But Eve met men everywhere: on her routes, at clubs, on the net.  Her bubbly, vivacious attitude warmed men tired of rejection on the clubbing circuit.  They could always count on Eve's laughter and smile.

I learned so much that summer about men and about the power of a positive attitude.  Even though Eve faced greater challenges than I did, she kept a positive outlook in public and let her joy radiate outwards even when inside she was feeling sorrowful.  I knew that her divorce and being away from her children while at university was difficult for her, but she never let that be an excuse to doubt her life or the importance of what she was doing.  She reached out to all of us in love and kept her anger at the divorce firmly directed at the person who was responsible for it, not at life in general.

Over the past year at 000Relationships.com, I learned that many of the women wanting more information on how to have better relationships and attract the right men were not teeny-boppers or inexperienced.  They were women like Eve.

Amazing, incredible women.

Women who knew that being good at relationships is not a skill we are born with.

Women who knew that the path to excellence in anything, including relationships, is research, practice, and living the message.

These women had had long-term relationships before, and this time around they wanted to know how to do it right. They had so much love to give men, if they could only get over the shields and defenses they'd built up from previous rejections.

I have a message for all those women out there who turn to us or to other relationship experts seeking the magic key to love.

There is hope.  Never ever believe there's not hope.  Happiness lies ahead for you, if you can only quiet that nagging voice inside that tells you to doubt.  That voice is wrong.  Don't doubt.  Believe in yourself.  Believe in your potential for happiness.

Women have found the man of their dreams at 17, at 29, at 44 or 75.  There is no age cut-off date for love.

There are so many men dreaming of love right now, just as you are dreaming of love.  They want you to love them as much as you want them to love you.  If you can learn to give the men in your life love right now (friends, family members, the bus driver, the postman, even strangers!), then love will be given back to you in abundance, as much as you ever dreamed of.

That's a law of the universe.  What you give is what you shall receive.  A person who is stingy with love (which I know you are not) will find that love rarely knocks on their door.

Have faith, hope, and love.  No matter what your situation, how old you are, how much time you have, there is always a door in your heart on which love can come knocking.