We talk a lot about singles, but we don’t talk about this: what it’s like to live without a partner while longing for one, over years, then decades. Whatever point-counterpoint, yin-yang recognition of a kindred other happens to people, it has not happened to her. Of all the men she has known romantically - and there have been plenty - none ever felt like home. Now, she thinks there has been a detour.Īfter Thanksgiving last year, Braitman read a review of Diane Keaton’s new autobiography, “ Then Again.” It contained this quote: “I never found a home in the arms of a man.” For most of her life, she assumed the right one would eventually show up. She dated, took up hobbies and developed a loving circle of friends. She went to college, moved across country, built a career in media. She does not think marriage is broken and does not think life - at least her life - is better lived alone.
She saw her brother become a wonderful husband.
She still does.īraitman grew up in Queens, watching her father dote on her mother. And her conversations, like her movements, are imbued with the elegance and self-awareness of a woman who has looked deeply inward and come up feeling more or less okay.īut she wanted a partner. Her brown, curly hair tapers to the neck, highlighted with flashes of caramel. It’s the look of someone with great style, opting for comfort. She wears boyfriend jeans, rolled to the ankle, and chunky sweaters layered over tight cotton shirts. Her body is taut and pliable from rigorous daily ballet classes. Q&A transcript: What Ellen McCarthy and Wendy Braitman had to sayĮven today, Braitman sometimes mentally revises past conversations to find the right words to make her mom understand: She didn’t stay single on purpose.īraitman is 58 now, though she has the carriage of a much younger woman. She had always loved her daughter fiercely and supported her fully, except in this one aspect, her singleness. “In the little capacity she had left of her brain, all she wanted to know was: Who am I with?”īraitman’s mom died six weeks later. “We went around and around in this circle of hell,” Braitman recalls from her condo at the foot of the Hollywood Hills. After another beat, her mom asks the question again. Dumbfounded, Braitman repeats the explanation.