I suggest that some women crave the situation more than the relationship itself, or as I said before: the status of having someone seems more important than who the someone is. This might explain why many women can tolerate bad marriages. For them, better that than be alone which would be the ultimate in a failed life. I believe such a priority is an impediment to good relationship which for me must be more about mutuality and less about the fulfilling of different needs. My romantic desire for the “mystical union” or the “sacred marriage”, and contempt for what passes for it, partly explains my reluctance so far in relationships.

Keeping remote has cost me dear. There can be no area where women are more ruthless, scheming and dangerous as when trying to achieve this relationship status especially when the man doesn’t play ball. The demeanour can be apparent even in the early stages of courtship. Sometimes as soon as an attraction has been registered a female will start with the manipulative tactic without regard for male sensitivities. Rejection can sometimes mean attraction. This behaviour is probably rooted in biology and compounded by social functions down the ages. It’s as if all men are reduced here to rutting cavemen who will keep hitting on the female until she finally demurs. Historically this has been exaggerated by the social status of women dependent on their being successfully wedded to a man.

In the modern context however, what with feminism and supposed enlightened thinking, it is absurd when males are apt to be more feminised themselves and likely to find such trials simply too off-putting. I have been a victim of too much power-play from women too often when a more direct and mutually recognised engaging might have got the desired response.

Yet many women would be appalled to think this is how they behave. And anyway, I’m not suggesting it is always conscious and deliberate on their part. It’s probably more often an instinctual process, and as I say, biologically and socially determined. It would have to be the superior faculties of the intellect which took supremacy over the biological and social to impose a morality which dominated these more primitive functions. I think this is where I stand but it seems like an impossibly difficult place to be and would take an age to pass into common understanding. But then, looking through history, all the finer ideas which are now lived by took a long time to evolve, so I guess this will be no different.