I don't understand the comment about a character being nominally a woman but not acting like a woman has to act in order to be a "true" woman. I can understand the assertion that certain sweeping generalizations about the genders are true, but in this case, which ones did the character defy that you wish she hadn't?

Authors will often obey the adage "write what you know." I think a lot of science fiction authors write about lonely characters specifically to avoid having to describe intimacy poorly. Out of all the factors of the techno-social complex -- such as science, philosophy, politics, engineering, crime, economics, or business -- could it be that romance and family are the factors they tend to understand the least? There are other genres that specialize in that.