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In 1986, Newsweek ran an infamous cover story saying that the odds of a college-educated woman who was still single at age 40 getting married were the same as being killed by a terrorist.

Not only was the statistic wrong, but it obscured two other important aspects of modern life.

First, most college-educated women over 40 are married -- 86 percent in the United States, at last count. And second, for those who aren't, marriage often isn't as big an issue for them as how to navigate the world of dating.

That was the subject Saturday at one session of the Society for Humanistic Psychology national conference at Point Park University.

Marjorie Scott, a psychologist and faculty member at the Michigan School of Professional Psychology near Detroit, discussed an in-depth study she and a fellow professor had carried out with a dozen women in their 40s who were either widowed or divorced.

The women ranged from a teacher and a psychologist to a real estate agent and business owner, she said, and for nearly all of them, the biggest challenge in dating was maintaining a strong sense of their own identities even when they strongly desired a relationship with a man.

Their ability to do that varied widely, Ms. Scott said.

One woman who felt she caved in to the men she dated said, 'I must have gone to doormat therapy school.'

Another had the opposite problem: 'I'm used to telling other people what to do,' she said.

And even though all of the women were highly accomplished, many of them were struck by how dating could emotionally propel them back to their teenage years.

As one woman at the session said, "you think, wait a minute, I'm this confident, competent person in all other areas of my life, so why do I feel like a little girl again?"

A woman in the study told Ms. Scott, "It's not hearing from him that puts me in overdrive and keeps me awake at night," while another said, "I realized it was when I was not in relationships that I felt sane."

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