I have always hated the culture around coupledom. There is something just a bit too smug and triumphant about the way attached women refer to my husband this or my boyfriend that. I hate the way they do that. I hate the way they give up their own name with such glee and adopt that of their man's in an act of willful submission as they enthusiastically defer to a dubious union.

I think it actually makes them feel sexy. I think it empowers them with respect to their status especially how they look to other women. There has to be some pay-back for the degraded state that women fall to in order to be somebody's life-partner. To me it represents a diminution of their potential and it couldn't be less sexy. A woman like that is sex-less to me. The ones who engage me that way in a second lose their attractiveness. This partly explains past turn-offs. I want them as players out there in the world doing stuff, making a difference and calling shots; not being beholden to some dodgy bloke, mired in the trivia of domestic life; not pandering to the infinite demands of an insatiable family trying to balance everything in an impossible equilibrium.

Then - the crime of all crimes, the ultimate of all pretences! - some of these women still try to make an attempt at having a big career. And yet with a part-time attitude - how can it be anything else? They demand equality with their full-time colleagues both male and female. What a disastrous collision of values is this.

Give me a woman who is free of all that, maybe even a bit contemptuous of it. Have her like the latter-day feminists who themselves must feel dismay at the pose of contemporary women. She may be a fantasy belle this genuinely independent person but maybe not. I guess women of this type do exist but are as yet terribly rare. My optimistic self sees the future with more of them and slowly but surely a culture emerging which exposes the drudgery and false promise of the standard model of coupledom.