Thinking about how relationships are these days - with much talk of toxic masculinity - I recalled how I thought about and approached the the potential relationships I had yet to enter when I was but a lad. It was a different world, largely free of pornography, entirely free of social media (except the telephone and the local milk bar) and less mediated by non-binary complications.

It's not that there weren't men with prediluvian attitudes to women - there were, though they were a small minority. It is that relationships were approached differently and nice blokes, like yours truly, had space to work in, even if there remained amongst many women, the desire for an alpha male. I am not sure about the latter phenomenon, whether biological, cultural, or both, but it always surprised me how many nice girls would date boys who were likely to let them down repeatedly.

My real problem, at least very early on, was to place a girlfriend on a pedestal, confident that no wrong could be done by doing so. Au contraire, but it could. It is a foolish mistake to imagine that your love is without any personality defect or that her every word or deed is without blemish.

The pendulum eventually swung somewhere closer to the middle, the Goldilocks zone of moderate contentment and reasonable co-existence. What more can you ask if you are seeking mutual satisfaction and a shot at longevity.