Spinster wish or commitment problem?

As Bolick broke off one long-term relationship after another throughout the book, I became more and more convinced that what she actually had was a commitment problem, not a "spinster wish." She seemed incapable of being alone for more than a few weeks, so I had a hard time believing that she longed for the single life. Did anyone else find her inability to remain uncoupled antithetical to her stated desire to be a spinster?

I thought she wanted to be part of a couple but was afraid that she would just be a wife if she did. I think she had the old fashioned idea that in order to have your own meaningful career and interests you can't get married. I think she wanted to be part of a couple but was afraid of losing her independence and her self if she married.

Bolick suffered from two major fears. The fear of being alone and the fear of making a commitment. She seemed to have a very immature outlook on life, one that says women are incapable of doing more than one thing. She really needs to take a long look at herself and ask What is it I want? She might just find that married women are very happy and fulfilled and have at the same time made a life for themselves.
She needs to find herself and to stop dressing up in other people's lives. She is not a paper doll.

Commitment problem and a fear of losing herself in a relationship but she also couldn't be alone. Maybe she didn't understand how to be successfully alone even if she wanted that.

She doesn't have a spinster wish because she would have avoided years of indiscriminate sexual liaisons and would have created something substantial with a solitary focus and a canny mind (think Edith Wharton's bedroom where the Grand Dame wrote). Bolick has a commitment problem and cannot grow beyond her fear of suffocation in a relationship. To think she has spent 20 plus years at the same level in the same dilemma does not point to growth. Bolick should be aware that friendships changes, people get sick and die and as we age, there is great relief in a "community" that sustains. Most people call that family.

Bolick expresses a very immature and limited view of a woman's power. She chooses to live in relative isolation rather than risk having to become a whole person within a relationship. Her ego forced her to idealize that life by labeling it with a century-old term "spinster". In my opinion she takes a giant leap backwards for womans' liberation.