'I thought becoming a solo mum by choice would make me undateable. I was wrong.'

I'm sitting in a pub at golden hour, next to a guy I knew in a past life, when I realise that I’m doing something strange. I’m tilting my head at what I hope to be a flattering angle. I’m laughing too much. I’m lightly grazing the man’s arm with my hand. I am, I’m shocked to say, flirting.

Why is this such a big deal? Because when I chose to become a solo mother by choice two years earlier – conceiving my son via donor sperm – I felt like one of love’s losers. At the time, the poem Couples, by Australian writer Kate Jennings, played over in my mind: "Lose him, weep him, couldn’t catch a man / much less keep him."

I’d failed at finding a man who would love me enough to have a baby with me. I was a kid again, in the schoolyard, staring at the ground, praying to be picked for the netball team while others around me peeled off into a joyous game of togetherness. 

In this story of failure that I told myself, I conveniently ignored all the men that I’d rejected on my dating path. It was, I reasoned, squarely my fault that I hadn’t met the one. I didn’t even believe in the one, unless of course I met them, in which case I’d convert to being a believer overnight.

Watch: The horoscopes dating. Post continues after video.

Long before I became a solo mother by choice, I’d spent my late thirties turbo dating to find a baby daddy. At the same time, I’d explored a parallel path: solo motherhood. I joined solo mum by choice Facebook groups. I went to a conference on how to tell your child that they were donor conceived. I attended appointments with a fertility specialist and did all the required medical tests. I went to a solo mothers' support group. 

The same evening of my first solo mothers' support group meeting, I went on a date to see a show with a handsome actor. I was wearing a gauzy transparent black dress and performing a version of my most charming self. I said nothing about my whereabouts during the day. About the fact that I was considering having a baby alone. A friend bumped into us in the foyer. The actor spoke to the friend about how he planned to move to New York; I had just returned from living there for 10 years, vowing never to return. The friend looked from me to the actor and joked: "It’s never going to work between you two is it?"

"No, it isn’t," I laughed, as my stomach clenched in despair.

I was – despite exploring my fertility options – still pursuing the grand romantic myth of foreverness. I’d bought into the idea that mothering alone was a runner’s up choice. But many of the women I met at the solo mothers' support group – who became some of my closest confidantes and friends in the years to come – were not waiting for love. They were self-possessed and confident about their choice. "I knew I wanted a baby, even more than a partner," one of them explained to me. I envied these women who had stepped lightly off love’s mandatory path; who were sure about their future.

Now, on the other side of my choice to become a solo mother, I felt relieved and unburdened from the pursuit of love. From the exhausting state of readiness and anticipation at love’s imminent arrival. Despite this, I still believed, on some level, that no one would ever find me attractive again.

But driving home after that golden hour in the pub where I’d been flirting – while my two-year-old slept soundly at his grandparent’s house, I replayed the evening. As the indicator blinked while I waited to turn onto Punt Rd, I silently repeated the man’s parting words: "It’d be really great to see you again."

This man wanted to see me again. Me. He found me attractive. He knew I was a mother. A solo mother at that. And he found me appealing. Maybe being a mother was part of my appeal, I thought. I felt sober and high. Here was a man who was interested in me. It turned out there were people who still found me desirable.

I’d heard Alyssa Shelasky, a New York magazine sex columnist, talk about how being pregnant as a solo mother had been a real 'panty dropper' for men. And if solo mothers by choice were love’s losers, then why were so many stratospherically successful and attractive celebrities solo mothers by choice? January Jones. Natalie Imbruglia. Sandra Bullock. Mindy Kaling. Minnie Driver. Charlize Theron. The list went on.

I realised, solo motherhood was just another path to making a family. It didn’t make me a loser. In fact, some men seemed to admire my choice – they regarded it with awe. And I didn’t have the baggage of a parent who was separated or divorced.

And many couples did end up separated after having a child. But I’d swallowed a lie. I’d believed that the couples were the successful ones. That they were life’s winners – they were the happy ones. I realised it was just another story, like so many of the stories we tell ourselves about love: that when we lose weight or get better clothes or have a more put-together life or curate our social pics or embark on the self-improvement needed to become more lovable – that’s when we will be worthy of love. 

Not only that, I’d believed the lie that singleness was a deficient state of being. As psychologist Chris Cheers explains, our culture views romantic love as "normal love", as the natural order of things. But this cultural dictate causes people mental pain and suffering when their lives don’t fit the conventional mould (if you’re not straight or married or partnered or cis-gendered for example).

Whether or not we fit the mould – I’d argue that none of us really do – we all want to be desired. And based on the new evidence I was seeing in the pub, it turned out I was datable. I’m not going to lie to you – being a single parent means that I have less time and resources or inclination to date. I’d rather spend a free evening with friends I know and like, than strangers who I might fall in love with.

Do men reject me as an option now that I’m a single parent? The ones who do are not the ones I want to meet. And my bar for what I want in a relationship has risen now that I have another being in my care, a person whose happiness I hold in my hand.

Listen to This Glorious Mess where a single mum to two joins us to talk about why she transformed her own life and what she learnt from other empowered single parents. Post continues below.

I can no longer be bothered wasting my time with fickle men, with Peter Pans, with guys who’ve never learnt to boil an egg or do their own laundry, with men who sleep on floor futons with musty sheets, with guys who still brag about being hangover. I have deleted the dickheads from my dating roster. The men I would have bent my life out of shape for in the past, I will not bend to now.

As I left the pub, I glanced back at the man’s hopeful face watching me from the bar. Despite his interest, I could see that he was yet another man child. He was a man I would have pretzel-ed my life around in the past. Once, I would have willingly spent my nights staring at the stuttering ellipses on my phone, waiting and wondering whether he was interested in me.

In my new life as a solo mother, he wouldn’t be enough. Having a child on my own had spared me the agony and uncertainty of dating men who weren’t worth my time. So I waved at the guy and smiled, as I walked out the door into the uncomplicated summer evening. 

Alexandra Collier has written for theatre, screen and print. Her memoir, Inconceivable: Heartbreak, Bad dates and finding solo motherhood, will be out via Hachette in April.

Did you know we have a whole family focused community you can join on Facebook for more discussions like this? Join the Mamamia Family Facebook group and follow Mamamia Family on Instagram and tell us what #parentinglookslike for you!

Feature Image: Supplied.