By April Mial

I grew up as a middle-class child with parents who stressed the importance of family. My father made the money so that my mother could go to school and earn a college degree.

My parents wanted me to learn from their example how a family worked together to achieve their goals. Since I idealized my parents, I was proud that my mother was going to school and that my father helped her to make her dream a reality. This was the path I was going to take: earn a college degree and get married to a man just like my father. Everything seemed so simple then.

However, as I got older, divorce became more common in middle-class families, and my parents, became part of that statistic. For my mother, the scars of her broken marriage included sleepless nights, frequent tears, and a difficult financial burden due to the split in family income. Heartbroken and angry, my mother counseled me not to depend on a man for anything. I believed her, and as a result became involved with a string of men like my father, who offered dreams that turned out to be nothing but empty promises.

After seven years of doing that, I had had enough. I started hating men for abusing me psychologically, telling me what I could and couldn’t do, all to hide the fact that they really didn’t believe in themselves. So I broke away from all of them and started on a professional writing career. I put my heart and soul into it, hungry to reap some kind of reward after all the time I had wasted trying to make these relationships work. If men weren’t going to make me happy, then I would find something else to fill up my life. At that time, I believed that my career was the solution.

I was on a mission—and it helped that the media supported my decision. There were songs, movies, magazines and books that glorified being an independent woman. I was part of a positive new phenomenon in society. But I put so much into my work that my love life fizzled. Men would leave me because all I talked about was my writing. They didn’t get the impression that I was interested in them. I was happy in spite of it because people cared about what I had to say, and I was getting published.

As my success increased, I became more obsessed than ever with reaching the top. Each little step took me closer to my ultimate goal. Even though I had a long way to go, I was proud of what I had accomplished. I put men on the side because I believed I would eventually have time for a family, just not now.

With success came money—money I didn’t have to ask my parents, or any man, to give me. I was independent in all aspects of the word. With money, I had power over my destiny. I didn’t have to ask anyone for his or her opinion; my money gave me the right to my own opinion. I was able to start small businesses with others that were just as driven as I was.

Everything seemed to be going right until I woke up one day and realized I was unhappy. Even with all the plans I had, something was still missing from my life. It wasn’t spirituality—I praised God every day and thanked Him for the things that He had given me. It wasn’t money—I was quite comfortable. And it definitely wasn’t drive—I had plenty of that to go around. But I was lonely.

The night I came to this realization, I had received news about a publisher who was interested in my book, but other than my parents I had no one to tell. I knew that they would be happy for me, and they were, but after telling them the excitement was over. I treated myself to a movie and came home to an empty house. The next morning I awoke alone. For so long, I believed that I was the only one who could make me happy. Now I knew I was fooling myself and that I missed having a family of my own to share in my success.

That night, I decided to call an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in a while. Since we both worked all the time (he’s a musician), we had lost contact with each other. Now I needed to talk to him. I knew he wanted something that I couldn’t, or wasn’t willing to give him, before: love. Now, my feelings had changed.

Too many times, I’ve seen women in their late thirties and forties putting love on a back burner while they pursue careers. They spend countless hours in their offices and are always on call. Their leisure time is spent talking about business. Who wants to live like that? I’m not going to lie, for a long time I did. Now, I need a balance. It’s time I got satisfaction from my personal, as well as my professional life. A preacher once told me that too much of anything is bad. I think he was right. My old friend might be the one, and then again we might stay “just friends.” Either way, I’m going to approach my next relationship the way I do my career—I’ll keep working at it until I am successful.

I still believe I don’t need a man to make me happy, but I’d love to have one to share my happiness!

April Mial is a freelance writer from

North Carolina now living in New York City.