Before Levi I was never capable of having "emotionless, no strings attached, sex." Being somewhat of a hopeless romantic, I couldn't even fathom such a thing. I wanted love, I wanted passion, I wanted romance. Everything else just seemed dull.

After Levi though, I completely understood. I didn't want a relationship. I didn't want to hear about anybody's problems. I didn't want to go out to dinner. But I did, sometimes, want to have sex. So, no strings attached sex became my "thing." Being new to that game I quickly discovered a few things.

1. There is no such thing as "no strings attached sex." Sure everyone talks a good game, men especially. But when you actually start playing you realize that emotions creep up (obviously varying) no matter what the situation. We are human, we have emotions. Damn.

2. These "relationships" are actually harder to manage because in between having sex all you're talking about is how great it is that you're not getting attached, how awesome it is that you're not in a relationship, how not jealous you are, etc. When actually, you are in denial, or at least one of you is.

3. As a result of all of that, these relationships oftentimes have messier break-ups than traditional relationships. Why? Because neither party was being completely honest and that is bound to hurt someone's feelings.

I just found this out again. And this time, it was my feelings that got hurt.

Found myself engaging with a man that I had already known for a bit who is also going through a divorce. We found ourselves talking about the divorce process at a party one night. Shortly thereafter we found ourselves having a "casual fling."

I didn't realize that engaging in this was making me feel crappy until a few days ago. We had dinner plans (yeah, yeah, yeah, we broke the no dinner rule, but, hey, we are so cool and so evolved that we can make our own rules). I was excited about going out to eat as Adrian is really not the best companion to take out to a restaurant.

I got a babysitter and spent all day at work looking forward to sushi, drinks, conversation — just a few hours escape from being mom. Then about an hour before we were scheduled to meet, he called. He said exactly this: "Look, it's raining out, and I'm tired so, um, if we're not going to have sex, I'm not going to come out. "So, um, yeah, are we gonna have sex?"

Yeah. He actually said that.

We didn't go out. And I found myself with semi hurt feelings. What? I'm good for sex but not for anything else? I think not.

Instead I went out with a girlfriend. I did some thinking, lots of talking and have decided that I'm no longer interested in those types of relationships.  I'm just selling myself short.

Almost two years has gone by since Levi left and I'm happy to say that in that time my self esteem has improved greatly. In fact, I think I'm pretty great. I'm smart, I'm fun, I'm a great mother and I deserve somebody who gets that.

So, I'm upgrading my cable and putting the men down for the time being. I'm going to continue to work on myself, to work toward making myself happy. Who needs a man for that?!!