Brainstorming ideas for a Happy Ending NOT involving marriage + kids for the heroine?

[MorganaPendragon25]

Finds a cure for a sickness. Which could be a conspiracy to keep the cure or medicine to treat it a secret from the world population. This is inspired by conspiracy theories of cancer not having a cure yet. That if they one day discovered it. It could be kept a secret for a long time since it is either a billion or trillion dollar industry. Someone the main character knows in the story has the sickness. Maybe cloned humans are experimented on. While this is happening cloned humans can't reproduce and are made to believe they are orphans. This is inner conflict. Give in to the temptation of greed or succumb to guilt. Could be a moral story that speaks volumes on human selfishness. Lord of the rings used both of these themes. If all else fails borrow from themes of stories you admire. Lord of the rings is one example of many. Use your favorite novel for a possible theme and put it in your story. Use works you admire to inspire you. Critics examine theme. It could be worth a try to emulate a work of fiction you admire.

Wow! Great concepts! Thanks for sharing!

[MorganaPendragon25]

What about she just ends up happy with her life at the end, as it is with no husband and no kids. There are a lot of women who actually have time to read because they don't have a family to look after. You could find a large target market I bet.

I just had lunch with one of my best friends. She is 46, single, no kids. She is one of the happiest people I know. She makes me happy just being around her. I think it's because she is not trying to impress anybody, and she doesn't actually care what anyone thinks about her. She is incredibly successful btw in business. Has the highest financial position in a billion dollar corporation. I think what makes her so special is just that she is so secure with herself. Oh, and she is a voracious reader!

This is a bit of a generalization, but I find many women, who are married with children, living the expected life, have a tendency to compare themselves to others. So when I'm with them, I feel like they are constantly sizing me up to make sure they measure up or are superior...or that their kids are. It feels like they are either being jealous or trying to make me be jealous. I find it really hinders a friendship. I have one friend who has children, the same age as mine. She always and I mean ALWAYS compares the kids. I have repeatedly asked her not to do it, because I think it's disrespectful to the kids...but she can't help herself.

Could you make her more like my single, kidless friend? That she genuinely cares about other people, and is not competitive because she is sooo comfortable in her own skin, that she only wants to make others feel good about themselves.

That is absolutely wonderful to hear! Thanks for sharing that about your friend and your own experience too! I have a handful of excellent female friends who are single and childfree and they are living their absolute best lives! They radiate so much youthful energy and positivity! They are wonderful people to be around. And what I see is that they don't compare themselves to parents. As you said, lots of times parents compare their lives to the childfree people's live and usually are jealous and say strange things to childfree people. I find my childfree single female friends to be overall the happiest people I know and they best part about it is they have the biggest hearts for other people. Maybe I could make her a single, kidless friend as you suggest. Maybe she'll develop a great need just to make others feel good about themselves, that's what the majority of my childfree friends are like!

[MorganaPendragon25]

Morgana, hard as this may be to accept, I suspect that the reason you're struggling with this so much is that your heroine is precisely the kind who will find out, perhaps even against her own expectations, that she wants to get married. What does she want? I mean, exactly? Reality: if she's a human, she probably wants love. Not necessarily erotic love, but because eros is arguably the deepest/most vulnerable form of love that two humans are capable of, fiction often revolves around its pursuit (or its avoidance!) The only real way to write a character who isn't pursuing love is to write one who has already found it, or one who is fleeing it. You do not need to have your protagonist pursuing specifically erotic love. But if she is unloved, she will by definition have an unspeakable craving for intimacy that claws at her soul.

By the way, 'friends and wine in your 40s' isn't love.

I think you may have picked a fight you can't win. Humans are programmed to seek intimacy. We crave intimacy. Intimacy requires vulnerability, vulnerability requires us to step outside our own self-expectations. Your protagonist wants to clutch at something, whether it be her husband, her God, or a wine-glass. Btw, what does 'sees as healing to her' even mean? Something is either healing or it isn't. It doesn't matter whether the protagonist 'sees' it as healing one bit. Hey, here's an idea: you mentioned wanting to write this girl as hating her own birthday. Maybe she hates her own birthday because her parents never loved her, and her birthday was a reminder of just how fake the celebrations really were. Eh? Gosh that's so sad though, lol. My birthdays were always great.

On erotic love! Hmm...yeah that's a good bit to bring up. I could see my heroine wanting that. I actually made a detailed sketch of her and I could see her as someone who naturally has a high sex drive. Not that I'm going to put that into her story, but I could as long as it's used write and is respectful to her.