London – Perched on the edge of a sofa, drink in one hand and a canape in the other, I tried to make conversation with my blind date.
As party-goers cavorted around us, I asked the nice man in the dinner suit about his job, then told him about my horses, before throwing in a couple of political firelighters to see if I could spark a conversation.
Eventually, we gave up talking and sat staring into space as our friends grew merry on champagne and danced around the living room.
The “date” was the result of a well-meaning friend insisting that I should not be alone to see in the New Year.
I insisted I was happy to stay in with the dog and watch TV.
She didn’t believe me. It’s that word “happy” everyone gets stuck on.
For society has a blind spot when it comes to women like me. How can I be happy when I am 42, without a man and childless?
They see me as a problem to be fixed, a conundrum to unravel.
That is why I felt a surge of empathy when Jennifer Aniston hit out at the ongoing public fascination with her personal life.
The Hollywood star spoke for happily unmarried women everywhere when she railed against society’s obsession with the traditional happy ending.
This fixation has dogged Aniston, 45, more than any other celebrity I can think of.
I have often thought how unfair this is. A gorgeous, witty, self-made woman, Aniston ought to be inviting widespread admiration for her achievements.
Yet instead, the world continually asks when she is going to marry whoever she is dating – currently actor Justin Theroux.
As she pointed out, when she poked fun at the ongoing speculation at a recent women’s conference in the US, the assumption is that women are unfulfilled unless they have married and given birth.
“Being a woman, our value and worth is basically associated with our marital status or whether or not we have procreated,” she told feminist and activist Gloria Steinem in California.
She joked that people assumed single, childless women were “in fact in deep s**t”. What she means to highlight, of course, is that the exact opposite is the case.
Women who remain childless and single, whether by accident or design, belong to the fastest growing demographic of our age.
But, as Aniston has found, and in my experience, too, we may as well still be in the Dark Ages.
As a single woman, I often find myself the subject of people’s pity and, sometimes, their suspicion. No one, not even my closest friends, seems able to believe I am happy in my unattached state.
When I tell them I don’t want to meet a man, they give me a look that says they think I am whistling in the dark.
They show ill-disguised disbelief when I assert that I do not want children any more.
And because I am in my 40s, they leave me in no doubt that though they are doing their best to fix me up, it is a tough task.
Honestly, anyone would think I was a spinster in a Jane Austen novel who will be destitute unless I can find a man to marry me.
As for the gossip single women endure, I often feel as if I’ve woken up in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, during the witch trials.
Last month, I went to a big formal dinner. As I arrived, one of the guests, there with his wife, greeted me, then looked behind me and said: “Who are you with?”
“No one,” I said. “But who did you come with?” he asked, frowning. “I came with myself,” I said, walking into the venue alone, as he stared as if I had walked in naked.
There is something about a woman alone that still scandalises polite society. Though we like to think of ourselves as advanced, we still see women as the weaker sex, in need of male support.
Even the term “fix you up” implies there is something to put right, that single women are broken need mending.
Did I set out to be on my own in my 40s? Probably not.
It has happened, in large part, because I spent my mid-30s with a man who did not want to settle down.
I don’t know the real story of Aniston’s marriage to Brad Pitt – when she was aged 30 to 35 – but I’m guessing there may be similarities.
I met the man I thought was the love of my life, a broker called Ed, when I was 34, and spent three turbulent years trying to persuade him to start a family.
By the time I accepted he was never going to agree to children, I was nearly 38. The child-bearing years of my life were almost gone.
By the time I was ready for another relationship, I was pushing 40 and getting pregnant was a whole different game.
I could have tried, at 38, to have a baby on my own with fertility treatment. At 40, when I did meet someone else, I could have tried to start a family with him. But it didn’t feel right.
For me, the formal arrangement of a marriage just wasn’t meant to be. Instead of a husband and children, I find fulfilment looking after my horses and spaniel pup.
I accept that a lot of the concern is well-meaning. Just as my friends worry for me, Aniston’s fans fret about her finding a man because they feel genuine affection for her.
But I also believe the reason so many women identify with the former Friends star is precisely because she is unmarried, childless and, by her insistence, happy.
When I was writing my last book, the publisher asked me if the main character would end up with the man of her dreams. Because it was a memoir, my publisher joked how brilliant it would be if I found a man, and a happy ending for the book.
I made the ending suitably ambiguous.
I am working on a novel and am grappling with the same question.
Will my heroine live happily ever after because she finds a man?
Or will she live happily ever after, even though she doesn’t?
I would like to think she is strong enough to find happiness either way.
* MELISSA KITE is the author of Real Life: One Woman’s Guide To Love, Men And Other Everyday Disasters(Constable).
Daily Mail