Prologue

Prologue

Ever since I was young, I’ve always wondered about marriage. I don’t mean I thought about marriage as much as I thought about women and marriage in general. At first, a girl was some person to talk to, and I vividly recall my grandmother didn’t like me talking to them. I didn’t know why she was so against it, but I can imagine it may have been either she thought that they would try something she didn’t approve of, or that I’d become homosexual because they’d make me effeminate.

At the time, neither prospect was on my mind. To me, girls seemed like natural conversational partners. All the boys I knew didn’t talk, they played. I didn’t mind playing, but I liked to discuss things. Don’t ask me why, I just did.

As I became older, I began to realize girls were different than boys. This epiphany, I imagine, is natural for both sexes, and with this realization I started to see women as much more than conversational partners. However, this bit of information would become for me both a pleasant surprise, as well as a curse.

The surprise was women could not only be someone to whom I could talk; they had now become someone with whom I could actually commune on mental and physical levels. And I realized very quickly with the revelation of female uniqueness two things: (1) I was definitely attracted to women, and (2) I had to learn how to relate to women in an entirely new way. This was my curse.

My problem is that I happen to be an extremely introverted person, even though I enjoy conversing with selected people. This may seem strange, but it is the truth. Most people who know me thought me an insufferable snob or unfriendly when we first met. But they realized after a while it wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk; rather, I didn’t talk if there was nothing to say. This has always been confusing to me. Why talk when there is nothing to say? Therefore, social interaction was in my eyes a necessary evil at best.

So, here I was, someone who had naturally learned to talk to women at an in-depth level, being hopelessly trapped in the position where I became “one of the girls.” I’m sure quite a few men may think this enviable. They are wrong, because being “one of the girls” rapidly excludes you from the pool of eligible marriage partners. Sadly, when you are in this position, most women tend to think you are gay (and I don’t mean happy)—which I know from experience I am not—or they invoke the “just friends” principle.

The “just friends” principle, for those who don’t know, basically states that the guy is seen only as a friend. There cannot be any romantic relationship. The woman is allowed to cry to you about her failed relationships or why she can’t find anybody for herself. You are no longer a man. You are a eunuch. This means even if you begin to have feelings for one of your female friends beyond brotherly love, you cannot express them. Or, when you do express them, they are inappropriate, making you a villain.