HAVING IT ALL: Fast track to femininity: Why competing with men has left women out of touch with their feminine side.

These days, as a single parent and sole breadwinner, I often feel more masculine than feminine. Working full-time, making every decision, paying every bill, driving myself everywhere, booking tickets for holidays, lugging the Christmas tree in – it’s all completely de-feminising. My friend Sophie, 46, who runs her own design company and is a single mother to two boys aged nine and 11, agrees. She has been single for six years, since her husband left her for another woman. Blonde, attractive and kind, she hasn’t been on a date since he walked out. ‘I have absolutely no idea how to be a woman any more,’ she says. ‘Because I run my business, my home and make all the decisions about the boys, I feel totally unfeminine. ‘I’m terrified of dating as I have no idea how to behave.

‘I would love a partner but I feel unattractive, untrusting, unsexy and completely alone.’ That, of course, is the crux for many of us.

We honestly believed that if we worked hard, we could have it all and more. Yet so many of us have ended up lonely, exhausted and broken-hearted, with far less of what we bargained for.