"FRIENDSHIP DELIVERED SO MUCH OF WHAT ROMANTIC LOVE HAD PROMISED"

Author Marianne Power talks to Psychologies about self-love and the sisterhood...

When you picture the stereotypical single woman, who comes to mind? It might be Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, Bridget Jones, or even Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love - but what is true for all of these characters is that their singledom is a holding place until they eventually find The One. Carrie finally marries Big, Bridget marries Mark Darcy and, after much soul-searching, Liz (Roberts) ends up with Felipe (Javier Bardem).

But for author and journalist Marianne Power, this isn't her experience. 'Not everyone is suited to being in a couple, but we live in a world that suggests otherwise,' she tells me. 'From fairytales and movies, to tax breaks for couples, our world is shaped around the couple and the family unit.

That's not to say that's not gorgeous for huge numbers of people, but it's silly to think we should all be living in the exact same way.' Power's new book, Love Me! (Pan Macmillan, £16.99), begins when she is 40, having just returned from what was meant to be a romantic trip to see a guy she'd met in a coffee shop who lived in Greece.

'I wrote about him in my first book [Help me!] and he was the subject of many journalist inquiries: "What happened to the Greek?" they'd ask." But, for various reasons, the trip is a disaster, and Power comes home feeling mortified that she's had yet another romantic failure. 'I was embarrassed that I'd literally alerted the media, and I was confused as to why this part of life doesn't seem to work for me,' she explains. 'Most of my friends, one way or another - through various different dating disasters - had eventually met someone. I questioned if there was something wrong with me and I needed to "fix" myself, or was it that this was actually not what's meant for me?" So, when a friend asked Power if she was heartbroken by the trip, she said 'no'. Disappointed, yes. Embarrassed, for sure. But heartbroken? No.