I separated from my husband just a year ago. The day before Mother's Day, to be exact. We were just kids when we married sixteen years ago, so breaking up was a seismic event in my life. We'd been together almost my entire adult life. Obviously I couldn't jump into dating right away. I decided to take a year off from men and just work on myself. Do therapy. Work out. Learn how to make myself happy -- which, it turns out, I already knew how to do quite well. And then, finally, after this self-nurturing incubation period I would be ready to enter the world of 21st century dating.

My first post-divorce "dating" experience was way more tawdry and hot than I'd ever expected.

My wedding day: Daddy, mommy, daughterAccording to the National Marriage Project, 58 percent of first births in lower-middle-class households and 40 percent of all U.S. births are to unwed mothers. A recent article in the Atlantic looks beyond those statistics; the author makes the case that no one is asking women how they feel about being unwed mothers -- a good question, and one that I can answer on my own behalf.

For the first three years of my daughter’s life, I was an unwed mother, and I didn’t like it, AT ALL. Ten years later, it turns out I was merely ahead of the celebrity trend (first baby, then engagement!), but at the time, not having that “piece of paper” made me feel vulnerable and not quite rooted.

I’m gonna share this with y’all because it’s just too rich to not tell someone. I am chatting, right now as I type, with a dude who claims to be interested in dating me, another Facebook friend who is enamored by my apparent ability to be charming in the few lines of a status update. Real life, eh. But social media, I’m slaying ‘em. Anyway, he just told me that among the other qualities I appear to possess, I’m pretty, but not too pretty, and that’s one of the things he likes about me. Join me in a long, blank stare, won’t you?

There’s never a dull moment in the science of studying single women. I often find myself thinking something along the lines of “Eff this English degree, I’m going back to school for statistics” because clearly, honey boo boo, that’s where the credibility, cash, and major publisher book deals are. Endangered animals teeter on the brink of eternal extinction, but for some reason, no species is more fascinating and ripe for study than the common Womanus Unmarriedus. In this latest round of findings, published at The Atlantic, we learn that geography is also a contributing culprit to our ringless status—a welcomed deviation from the routine look-how-suckishly-your-parents-raised-you approach. “The Worst Cities for College-Educated Women Trying to Find a Decent Date” takes a look at the gap between folks 35 and under in 102 U.S. metro areas. Wow, just a decent date? And the bar slips even lower.

Baby boomers need love, too, guys. Especially those who are currently divorced or widowed or somehow just single because they never thought it necessary to get hitched. But if they have a kid, they're in luck! Because now said kid can create an account on a dating website exclusively built around adult children playing matchmaker for their single folks! Too cute (and, also, damn, I wish I had thought of this!).

Thirty-five-year-old Matt Connolly, who co-created the new UK-based dating site called MyLovelyParent.com, says his mom served as his inspiration. He calls her “a very lovely lady in her 60s, who has been single for too long. Early last year she asked me if I could help find her knight in shining armor.” Awwww!

Remember when you were in high school and it was cool to hang out with your friend and her boyfriend if your boyfriend was there, too -- but if you and your friend's boyfriend happened to go to the movies or something without your significant others, everybody would be all like, "That's weird" and suspect something was "going on" even if you were legitimately just friends? Well, the same thing happens when you're grown up and taking your own kids on playdates with other parents of the opposite sex -- if, that is, you're divorced.

And that sucks, because, here's a confession: Back when my kids were little and playdates always required the presence of at least one "caregiver" per child, I always secretly preferred it when those other parents were dads.

New Year's Eve ranks right up there with the Fourth of July in terms of holidays I hate.

There's nothing wrong with celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next - it's just that I've always had lousy New Year's Eves.

When I was married, it was the one day out of the year we'd end up fighting about nothing, until I evoked the rule, "Let's stay home, drink champagne and eat pizza WITHOUT TALKING." That way, we could both avoid the New Year's Brawl.

At first I feared New Year's would be a hell of a lot worse now that I'm single but it doesn't have to be. I've come across some awesome ideas for what to do when you find yourself single on the last day of the year.

Back in 2001, I gave birth to a bouncing baby boy named Ben. His father, my sorta-boyfriend, wasn't always a particularly nice man. He'd gotten into some bad habits while I was pregnant - he'd frequently disappear, only to yell at me if I dared ask where he'd been, claiming I was "trying to ruin his life."

Once my son was born, I realized that I couldn't allow him to grow up watching his mother be treated in such a manner. So I broke it off with his dad before he ever knew us together.

Ben is now 11 going on 45, and has never known life with his father and me together. But don't be fooled: breaking up with him was one of the hardest things I'd ever done.