I Walked Along The Sewer, But Never Fell In

This was my experience until I met, at age 37, the woman I've been married to for now 22 years. I was a virgin throughout college and grad school. The women I asked out either declined outright, or I would spend one evening with them and sense tensions. The sort of women I am attracted to are quite capable of making ugly sarcastic asides, and being petty and demanding. It was called being assertive and sticking up for yourself. I had no trouble meeting women I liked very much, but they were generally spoken for, or deemed me beneath consideration. At the same time, I knew that there were more marriageable young women than men, and that many 20 and 30 something women had lonely lives. But I never could make those facts work to my advantage. Once I was involved with my wife, I began meeting heaps of interesting never married and divorced adult women. But by then I was spoken for.

The upshot is that I have never played the dating game. I walked along the banks of the open sewer that was university sex during the 1970s and 80s, but never fell in. While I was lonely and very sexually frustrated, I did not experience the turmoil that so many people went through in their dealings with the opposite sex. And when university women would make sweeping ugly generalisations about men in their dealings with women, I knew privately that I was innocent, because they were talking about a game I did not play. It looks like I will go to my grave having carnal knowledge of only one woman, the one I am married to.