If the time should come that I can think about dating again, I'll have a fundamental problem to overcome: the plague. Yes, I have the plague or something equivalent to it that makes the softer sex run away, screaming for life. I can recall at least four instances of such terror-runnings over the past twelve months.

The cause of this fundamental and monumental problem is both obvious and murky to me. Obvious because I can hear a professional making the cause and effect link after suffering through an hour of listening to my sad tale; murky because I just don't' get why behavior A leads to outcome B. Thus I flounder and fight the tide that would bring me home to the sheltered harbor I dream will protect me from the frequent, sudden, violent storms I new endure.

Dating then is a distant, sometimes pleasant, often forgettable, memory, not a present hope. And my pain grows.