Tracy McMillan Quotes

I’ve been standing at water coolers for the past thirty years talking to women about their love lives, and here’s what I’ve learned: Eventually, most women I know want to be partnered.

Rather than diminishing the idea of ‘truly needing’ a relationship – and trying to deny it, shame it, or talk ourselves out of it – why not just celebrate it? It’s exactly what the world needs.

For every year past the age of 27, you need to take another step toward commitment somewhere in your life. Instead of freelancing, you get a staff job. Instead of renting, you buy. Fine, instead of couch-surfing, you rent.

Here’s the thing: you’re not really ready for love until you have enough self-respect that if you met your exact self, but in a guy, you would totally, completely, absolutely want to be with him.

Sometime between when the Summer of Love ended and the Summer of Sam began, America became a nation of cynics about love.

Women blame men for their own singlehood.

Lots of people feel more alive when they’re riding a roller-coaster relationship. But while this might be fun for a while, it can’t possibly last.

Being all about me is not a good thing – I don’t care what 1978 tried to say – because as long as you mostly think about yourself, you’re not going to be a wonderful person. You’re just not.

The deal is: most men just want to marry someone who is nice to them.

I think every woman has this point in her life where she’s like, ‘I have a great job, great outfits and great friends, but something’s missing.’

Though it’s safe to say there are a whole lotta American gals who agree with the core ideals of feminism, they are somehow nevertheless watching ‘Say Yes to the Dress’ by the millions.

A sure-fire way to know you’re crazy is if more than one person has told you you’d be great on a reality show – and you agree with them.

Somehow, married or single, we’d rather anesthetize ourselves with love substitutes than go for the real thing, because let’s face it: The real thing is pretty scary.

Without really trying to, I’ve become a sort of jailhouse lawyer of relationships – someone who’s had to do so much work on her own case that I can now help you with yours.

Caring – about people, about things, about life – is an act of maturity.

Is our desire for partnership just an evolutionary remainder, a Togetherness Delusion, where millions of women only think they need a relationship to be truly happy? Maybe. But you know what? That’s fine with me.

You can’t trick The Universe – it’s like Santa Claus that way.

When relationships don’t work out, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, it just means you weren’t meant to be together.

I think of masculine and feminine energy like two sides to a battery. There’s a plus side and a minus side, and in order to make something turn on, you need to have opposites touching. It’s the same in relationships.

Because I was a television writer for many years, I write very conversationally. I put things straight, and with a lot of humor.

Being in a relationship is a hard, painful slog at least once a week, maybe more often – especially if you have a lot of defenses to let down, or if your parents didn’t know how to love you very well.

Women with low self-esteem love bad boys. Women who have work to do love bad boys. Women who love themselves love good men.

If you’re not married, chances are you think a lot about you.

One of the beautiful things about men is that they’re very in the moment. That’s why they don’t want to have an argument about what happened six months ago.

I’m a blunt person, not mean-spirited. I come from a place of love, but I’m interested in being real.