Recently, on a trip as the only single friend with a group of couples, I had a realization — the guys my friends were with were actually a whole lot cooler than I had thought they would be before I met them. Having only known them by their “credentials” before this trip, I had assumed they’d all be less than stellar boyfriends.

Setting and maintaining your standards is one of those skills that people simply don’t talk about enough. However, it’s one of those skills that has the power to affect every single aspect of our lives, for the entirety of our lives, and we’re just left to fend for ourselves.

As beautiful as the future of having children seems to me, a future full of freedom and adventure, of peace and quiet, of being responsible only for myself and answering only to myself is, at this particular moment in time, much more in line with the life I want for myself. I love my not at all childproofed life.