For years my parents’ church supported a missionary in Nepal who, by all accounts of her ministry, was the definition of badass. But – and I’m not sure where or how I learned to think this way – even as a young girl, I distinctly remember praying that I would never end up like her.

Flash forward a couple of ily of outrageously adorable children and as we walked to the park, one of the girls asked me if I had a little girl of my own. I said I didn’t. The first girl stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk and exclaimed, “You mean you don’t have a man?” It took everything in me not to burst out laughing – largely because, as most of us realize when we get older, having a partner often complicates, rather than simplifies your life.