I was only about 12 years old when I had a fantasy of finding the love of my life in some smoky basement bar in Manhattan. I would be sporting a wide brimmed hat, like Clark Gable, and she would be sitting alone on a bar stool, one elegant long leg entwining the other. She'd be smoking a cigarette from a long ivory cigarette holder. Our eyes would meet and there would be a "coup de foudre".
I lived with only females after my mother divorced my dad. I enjoyed my mother's lady friends who came over to play Scrabble and drink Vecchia Romagna Brandy and espresso. The acerbic gossip delivered in the inimitable mid-western nouveau rich bourgeois bitchiness entertained me so much and definitely contributed to the bitch I am today.
In my late teens, I discovered a variety of reasons why men and women marry, e.g. my parents were both beautiful and intelligent and they married after the war because both had children from previous marriages and they used each other to provide their respective offspring with a quick fix. They realised later that she was better off as a single parent and he with someone he really loved.
I saw cheerleaders marry star quarterbacks just after high school, either because they were too perfect for anyone else or the pompom girl got pregnant. Later in life, I discovered that people married because of peer pressure, the need to climb the business social ladder, or insecurity about being alone. I knew many who married for money which took away all my ambition of becoming seriously wealthy like a friend of mine who despite his being legally sterile fights on average one paternity suit a year. After affairs with married women I decided it more advantageous to be the "other man" than the husband. I guess you could say I became quite circumspect, accounting for why I never married.
In my Halcyon days, all I wanted was an orifice and an audience. I've been involved with wonderful ladies and treated most of them ignominiously - as easily replaceable objects on a conveyor belt. Maybe I knew all the time I wasn't ready for a committed relationship because I have seen how often married couples grow apart through their life changes/passages every decade or so. Marriage has a 50 percent breakdown record and I would never buy a car like that even it looked as good as an Aston Martin.
Recently, I have managed to survive a tremendous struggle which I hope may have resulted in an epiphany, i.e. instead of the "... invincible, frigid, patriarchal, war-making" [Aaron R. Kipnis] person I have been, I'm now gravitating toward a "... newly emerging image of masculinity ... of creativity, fecund, generative, nurturing, protective, and compassionate male ..." [Aaron R. Kipnis].