“In order to be intimate with another, one must first be willing to be intimate with oneself, and any addiction, regardless of what it is, is an avoidance of intimacy with the self.” – Anne Wilson Schaef, Escape From Intimacy. Strangely, romantic relationships can function as an addiction no less powerful than drugs or alcohol. Doubly strange is that many of the people who hold up intimate relationships as the ultimate value in life are…
I’m 62, been retired for 5 years and a committed bachelor for 15. In my view, retirement holds a special appeal for the single man, and it also entails several challenges. I want to describe those and offer some suggestions. I won’t cover the financial aspects of retirement. Plenty of people are doing that already. I want to look at the more psychological, social, and philosophical aspects. To lay it out briefly, I think that…
[edit: Some of the women didn’t like this one. I gave a trigger warning, but they still got triggered. Part of that was my fault – I should’ve known better than to post this on female-dominated forums. It went over like a turd in a punchbowl. But let me issue the trigger warning up front: if you get offended when a man discusses his standards for LTRs and assigns low probabilities to the women in…
If you’re single, you will “die alone.” You’ve probably heard that message, either directly or through the media. Maybe you’ve conjured up the image yourself: dying alone in a sterile hospital room, lonely and unloved, or dying alone in your apartment, days passing before anyone discovers your body. Oh, the shame, the post-mortem shame. Years ago, I was on an online forum. I said that I wasn’t interested in getting married or having kids. Knowing…
Everyone knows the importance of believing in your ability to achieve goals and persisting despite adversity. Let’s take that for granted. I want to talk about the flip side — about the times when it is best to give up. Sometimes, the wisest course is to drop a goal, walk away, and invest your energy elsewhere. Specifically, let’s talk about the times when it might be best to give up on relationships — and when…
The more seriously you dedicate yourself to personal growth, the less likely you will find yourself in a good romantic relationship. I’ll explain why, but first let me clarify what I’m talking about. By “personal growth” or “self-development,” I am referring to psychological, intellectual, and spiritual learning and growth. I’m not talking about building a career or muscles. I’m talking about internal development. Secondly, I’m speaking about people who are seriously dedicated to…
If you want to live a contented life as a bachelor, here are six essential ingredients. Like essential nutrients, if you lack any, your singlehood will not be as happy as it might be. I speak from experience. I have lacked in each area, labored in each area, and seen the benefits in each area. Some of these “essentials” apply to the coupled, too, but all of them have special significance for the single. I’ll…
Pets have a lot of advantages over women. Sure, they have some downsides, too — for example, you can’t have sex with your dog. Well, you can, but I wouldn’t recommend it. And you can’t have deep conversations with your dog. Put those downsides aside for a moment, though. Let’s talk about the ways dogs nose out women. I’m a dog man, so I’ll be talking mostly about dogs. I love other animals, too, but…
A romantic partner will complete your life — so we are told in a hundred ways, implicit and explicit. Even if we recognize the foolishness of this belief, it can still pester us, because the conditioning is so pervasive and persistent. So, let’s spend a few minutes deprogramming. First, where does this belief come from? Well, as usual, from nature and nurture. First the nature, then the nuture… Nature We are the products of a…
Sex is overrated and overhyped. I understand why. It is wired into us at a basic level. None of us would be here without it. Nature prioritizes sex over everything except survival, and sometimes even survival is a casualty of sexual desire. Sex is undeniably important. Spiritual mythologies have been founded on it, not to mention tens of thousands of companies. Trillions of dollars flow into sex-based industries, whose combined income would dwarf the GDP…