Five Men Who Broke My Heart

Have you ever thought about the ones that got away? Ever found yourself thinking "what if" about past relationships?

Journalist Susan Shapiro has. In fact, she wrote a book about it.

In the midst of a midlife crisis on the brink of her 40th birthday, she found herself a frustrated novelist and wannabe mother with a completed manuscript that publishers kept rejecting, married to a workaholic comedy writer who travelled a lot and is unable to father the child she thought she wanted.

And the 'spark' had gone out of their marriage.

Feeling insecure, she perked up when she heard from an ex-boyfriend named Brad. 'I hadn't seen Brad in ten years,' she divulges in anticipation of their reunion. 'In ten minutes he was coming back to see me. Not to say 'I'm sorry,' 'I can't forget you,' or better yet, 'No woman has ever been able to replace you. The real reason Brad, now a professor at Harvard, had sought her out was because he wanted her to interview him about his upcoming book for one of the publications she wrote for.

But still, she decided to take advantage of the opportunity to ask Brad some questions about where their relationship had gone wrong.

She fell, reluctantly, for Brad when she was 16 and attending college, because he reminded her of the 'fierce rivalry' she had experienced while growing up with three brothers. Although the relationship had ended with college, the butterflies that appeared in her stomach prior to their recent reunion told her that she'd never really gotten over him.

With her biological clock ticking menacingly, she thought, "If I'd married Brad, I'd have children by now, but we'd surely be divorced. If I was single, I could have his baby without marriage." But then '$20,000 worth of therapy kicked in