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In 2002, I was paired up with Peter Krause to present at the SAG Awards. We’d met before in the late nineties, on an episode of Caroline and the City where we were both guest stars, but back then there was never a hint of anything romantic. I’d followed his career on television as a fan of the too short-lived Aaron Sorkin series Sports Night, and been wowed by his work on the incredible HBO show Six Feet Under. Our paths crossed occasionally at an event or party, but I avoided handsome actor-types as a rule. Over the years I’d learn that my concerns were unfounded and there was nothing to fear: attractive, straight, successful actors actually don’t get as much attention as you might think, because women find them so intimidating that they—AHAHAHAHA, I can’t even finish that sentence with a straight face. Those dudes get all the attention you think they do, and then some. So I was generally wary of what I deemed his “type.” But we were always friendly. Backstage that night, we made small talk, and just as our names were being announced he turned to me and said calmly: “Want to hold hands?”

It was such an odd, old-fashioned, unexpected question. Did he mean anything by it? If we did walk out holding hands, would people think we were together? Would holding hands make it easier to walk in my very high heels? I hadn’t held hands with anyone in what felt like a million years, so I decided it didn’t matter. “Yes,” I said, and we did, and then we presented the award, and I went back into the audience to sit back down next to my date for the evening, a gainfully employed lawyer who was also my dad. I didn’t see Peter again for years.

After I first moved to L.A., I was in a long relationship with a wonderful guy, but I wasn’t yet ready to settle down. After that ended, I contracted a case of man-repellent-itis so severe that it is still being studied by the Mayo Clinic. Or at least that’s how it felt.

For a very long time I worked and worked and worked, and then I looked up one day and all my friends were married with children. These married-with-children people were still my friends, but they’d become part of a community I wasn’t in, a club I didn’t belong to. Socially, their lives had completely changed, and they were busy. Their attention had turned to carpools and birthday parties and school tuition, and I was playing catch-up: “Wait, so we don’t have game night anymore? You guys, who’s free for dinner Saturday? Oh, absolutely no one?”

I looked at these friends and realized: Well, duh, work is gratifying, but it isn’t everything, and it’s no fun to sleep with at night. It just took me longer to see that, and I didn’t have the same urgency they had to get to it, but then one day, just like that, I thought, I get it now. I’d be interested in this other stuff. But I’d missed the time when most people around my age had paired off. It was as if I’d misread the schedule at Penn Station and the trains to Happy Couplehood had all left already, and there I was with nothing to do but sit with the drunk businessmen at the bar and nurse a warm beer and wait for the trains to start up again. I waited and waited and waited for those trains.

I attended weddings by myself, went to parties I didn’t feel like going to, “just in case,” and was escorted to events by my dad, my cousin Tim, and my dear friend Sam. “Who’s with you tonight? Aww, your dad again?” journalists would say, with a sympathetic frowny face. The only bright spot, dude-wise, was at an event where I met Matthew Perry. He became my longtime Friend Who I Almost But Never Exactly Dated, or FWIABNED. We probably all have at least one FWIABNED in our lives. My FWIABNED is very special to me.

At one point during this time my father was on a plane and noticed a woman reading a magazine I was in. “That’s my daughter,” he said proudly. The woman turned to him with a look of pity. “Please tell her I didn’t meet my husband until late in life—there’s still time,” she said. Strangers were worried about me; that’s how long I was single!

There’s nothing wrong with being single, unless, it seems, you’re an actor getting interviewed a lot. Gilmore Girls was at its peak then, and I was getting interviewed a lot. During these years, when the press asked me if I was seeing someone, I’d just say, “I’m dating.” Sometimes that was true and sometimes not. Either way, I wasn’t in anything secure enough to talk about or expose publicly. But over time, I felt increasingly vulnerable when I had to face these questions. Magazines don’t like it when you say too little about your personal life—it makes the pages very hard to fill. If they had their way, every article would be full of sex and gossip, and I couldn’t contribute stories about either. Interviewers seemed increasingly frustrated, and interviews became less about what project I was doing and more a thinly veiled reiteration of “Join us today as we try once again to figure out what is wrong with this poor girl who just can’t seem to get a date!”

I knew I didn’t want to stand on a red carpet and reveal too much, but I was at a loss as to what or how much to say. You may think there’s a sort of School of Fame where actors learn how to handle tricky situations, but there isn’t. (Someone call Shark Tank!) Not for the first time, I wished there was someone to ask, or a Peanuts-style Lucy booth with a sign that said THE DOCTOR IS IN. I wasn’t looking for a three-month seminar, just a place I could stop into when I needed a quick answer on how to handle problems I hadn’t even known existed back when all I dreamed of doing as an actor was performing in the chorus of a regional theater production of Oklahoma. How to walk in heels! Don’t Google yourself, and other helpful tips! How to talk to Us Weekly about your new or nonexistent relationships! Take a pamphlet! Five cents only!