I knew there was a moment in my life when I yearned, like I thought I was supposed to, for “the one,” but my true inclination is to yearn for the many. And not just loves, relationships, romances—but friends and close-knit family.

The buzz heard round the blogosphere last week when the New York Times did a story called When the Ex Blogs, the Dirtiest Laundry Is Aired wasn’t so much a start of surprise as a nod of recognition.

Money and romance, yeah, it’s tough. I’ve always been one of those people who wanted to control her own money, and didn’t feel trusting about sharing. Control issues, you know? Even when I was married, it took a while--I think we were married for 6 years before I agreed to share a bank account. Before than, as I recall, my husband and I took turns dividing the household expenses and paid out of our mutual checking accounts. Keeping your own money just seemed more honest to me, cleaner.

During my last gig, at the online dating service, I used to joke about how differently men and women seemed to approach online dating. In interviews and click stream behavior, women indicated, again and again, that they wished the dating service would pick out a small selection of absolutely perfect matches for them; guys, on the other hand, seem to want ways to get the broadest possible number of women to read their email, find them fascinating and write back. The women wanted quality, the men, options.

For the past few weeks, my posts have been about me, me, me. While that’s all fun, it’s time to give others a turn. This week’s post is a round up of some fresh voices that speak to me, hopefully ones you’re not already reading. Here's some recent additions to my blogroll:

So now that A and I have been more or less living together almost full time for the past seven weeks, we’re starting to argue a bit. Not full-blown screaming fights (I hate drama), but moments of heated discussion, incidents of one person getting annoyed or exasperated or angry, situations where one or both of us didn’t actually communicate all that well. They’re not so much small disagreements, but moments where we see clearly how differently we think, and/or how differently we do things.

Okay, so there was a period of time—maybe a few years—where I was convinced I’d never meet someone I’d want to spend a large chunk of my life with. In love or not, paired or single, the possibility of connecting with someone I’d both want to live with and plan a future with seemed just really, uh, remote. After all, hadn’t I already been married for 10,000 years and been through all the bonding and the compromises? Why on earth would I ever want to go through the trouble of trying to do that again?

As I’ve made my way through being single post divorce, I’ve gone out with some people that my friends didn’t like. It wasn’t just that the guys had a profession my friends didn’t expect, or political views more liberal (or conservative) than my friends, or employment or marital histories (or lack of them)radically different than mine, it was that they just didn’t feel that some of the guys I went out with made sense.

I remember, back in the day in the early 80’s, when I first saw the picture of Patti Smith on the album cover for Horses. That narrow white face, that long dark hair—and the lanky body in boy’s clothes—Patti was breaking all the rules I’d grown up with and it simultaneously thrilled and scared me half to death.

Everyone expects mommy bloggers to write about their kids. In fact, many women who write a so-called mommy blog are only too happy to transcribe every detail of Junior's life -- first steps, first words, and every occurrence in-between and beyond. Share and share some more seems to be the order of the day when it comes to talking about our kids.

Every February, I find myself hedging about Valentine’s Day. I hate the holiday because it’s a manufactured excuse to extract money from Americans for cards, dinners, gifts, flowers, and chocolates, as though all the concern and care lovers should show to one another can be expressed via a big credit card spend on one over-hyped night.

In my three years as a single, I’ve learned that if I’m going get past the first few dates and actually start seeing someone, the next big milestone happens around six months. This is the point at which it’s clear, that while we get along, there are bigger questions to ask, like: “How closely does this person fit with what I think I want?” and “Do I know enough about this person’s strengths and weaknesses to really see him/her as they really are (in other words, without all that New Relationship Energy (NRE)?