i had drinks the other night with a couple of friends, both of whom are having women troubles. through the course of our conversation, as i tried to offer help and council, the microscope was turned my direction. of course, i don’t have women troubles, at least not in the way they do, and so i played it off like i am happy with my life of perpetual bachelorhood.

now, don’t misunderstand. there is a large part of me that truly has no complaints about my life. i’ve taken my trials in stride and have very few complaints about my life. i may have no job, live with a chronic illness and on a shoestring budget provided by unemployment insurance benefits, but i’m doing exactly what i want to be doing. i get to spend every day doing what i love; politics.

most of the time i think a woman would certainly complicate what i describe as a simple and happy life. my schedule is sporadic and every day is a bit different. i don’t like much the idea of having to divide my time between a relationship and trying to build a reputation and potentially a career. and i told my friends this, leaving out the “most of the time” bit. i made it sound like the last thing i want, or need, is a relationship.

the truth is, there’s a part of me that has always longed to be in love. i’ve been a hopeless romantic for as long as i can remember. now, in my younger days, i tied all my happiness to being in a relationship; if someone loved me then i must be a person of value. that’s not the case anymore, but i still have the same desire to be recklessly in love. what stands in my way is more or less the same thing that has always stood in my way: me.

in my younger days, i was so terrified of girls (or rather their rejection of me) that i mostly pined from afar. in the extremely rare instances when i didn’t, rejection almost always ensued. in college, there was just one girl and the story of her and i is too long to get into here, but needless to say, it didn’t go well.

one problem is that i seem to be almost always attracted to girls that are simply unavailable, whether their uninterested, unavailable, or are geographically distant. whether this is a result of my disfunction or mere coincidence is open to debate, but is the reality of my life nonetheless. in my whole life, i’ve been on so few dates resulting from at least a passing mutual interest that i can actually count them all on one hand; none of them ever resulted in a second.

i am on record as having said that no girl has ever been attracted to me and while i’ll admit here, officially, that is not actually the case, it does bring me to the other problem i have…. i hesitate to go into too much detail, as it is somewhat humiliating, so let me just say this: i have some deep seeded, inexplicable fear of intimacy. as i’ve gotten older, i have come to accept this as a reality and am not nearly as uncomfortable talking about it as i once was, if only because over the years i’ve had to explain myself to the few women who have been interested in and attracted to me.

it is the combination of these two problems that have led me to give up on searching for love, a relationship, whatever. i gave up quite a few years ago. during my time seeing a therapist, i learned not to question so much as to learn how to accept certain circumstances and make the best of them. and so, with regard to women, this is what i have done; i’ve accepted that given these two problems the odds of me finding myself in a relationship are so very unlikely as to make it not worth striving for.

would i be happier if i had someone? probably. i’m pretty happy with my life as it is, though, and have decided that the complications and frustrations that come part and parcel with the dating game aren’t worth the very slim possibility of a positive result. i used to rest all my hopes of happiness on being coupled. that’s not the case any more and i’m at a point in my life where i’m not willing to sacrifice what happiness i do have for chance at more.

all of this is not to say that if something good were to present itself i’d look the other way, but for now i just don’t feel like bothering with any of that nonsense.