A 38-year-old woman named Melissa Persling said she felt betrayed by feminism after deciding she wanted to have a family and a husband.

“I feel unbelievably betrayed by feminism, and I don’t want to put it on the movement [entirely] because I believe you make your own choices… But I was constantly fed this idea that women can do everything. We don’t really need men… I kind of want to go back to some of those teachers and coaches and say, ‘What did you mean by that? Because we can’t do it all,” she said in an interview with Fox News Digital.

She recently wrote an essay titled, “I’m 38 and single, and I recently realized I want a child. I’m terrified I’ve missed my opportunity.” She wrote in the article how she felt urgency to find a stable relationship and was rethinking about wanting marriage and children. “I hardly recognized myself,” she wrote in the article. “I also began to feel selfish for spending so much time focusing solely on myself… My very existence started to feel shallow and hollow.”

“I was panic-stricken. I really thought I’m going to be alone forever. It really scared me. I almost wrote [the article] as sort of a warning to other women. I don’t want people to miss out on the important things in life because they’re just enjoying themselves because I don’t think that that’s ever going to really make you happy,” she said.

“Moving into my future, I’m not going to be traveling. I’m not going to have a lot of extra money. I’m not going to be going out for fancy dinners and I’m OK with that. I’m ready for that. I think that’s what’s really going to make me happy. Like I’m so done just making myself happy,” Persling further said.

“You think you’re happy when you’re doing all these things [when you’re single] to make yourself happy. I don’t think you really are. It’s the relationships that make you happy. It’s building something with another person. It’s creating a life with another person, having goals and plans with another person. It’s making other people happy. Making people you love happy. That’s happiness. I really don’t think I will know true happiness until I’m in that place,” she added.

When Persling was 22, she married a traditional man. “He wanted a simple life with children and home-cooked meals,” she said. However, Persling made it clear to her husband-to-be that she did not want children.

“At that time I felt very strongly I did not want children, that I wasn’t going to be like the traditional housewife. I knew I did want to pursue a career,” she told Fox News Digital. “And I felt very strongly that that would never change. And I guess I was wrong.”

Persling said she became resentful when he would ask for dinner or for his laundry to be done. “I did little to hide my disdain for our small-town life. He was a good and hardworking man, but I don’t think I made him feel that way,” she said.

At 30, Persling and her ex divorced; she swore off the idea of marriage. “I told my friends and family I’d never get married again. I needed independence, a fulfilling career, and space to chart my own course, and I didn’t think marriage fit into that vision. I was content to look toward a future without a husband, children, or the trappings of a ‘traditional’ life,'” she wrote.