About Unmarried Losers

"Did I ever tell you why I never got married?" the Complete and Total Loser said to a coworker he's been friends with for several years a few days ago. Moments before he'd had an awful encounter with a horrible, rude woman and the coworker was there to see it.

She laughed. "Oh, I know why," she said.

The conversation was diverted and not continued until today, when the Loser asked her what she was going to say.

Her answer: "You're too set in your ways."

The Loser's heard that before. It's true, of course. At over 50, the Loser can't imagine living with someone else, making the zillion compromises each day that couples do. When is mealtime in the Loser's grimy apartment? When he says it is! Sex tonight? Sure! It's up to him!

But the answer the Loser's friend gave is incomplete. 

The Loser hasn't always been set in his ways. Granted, he may have been a little less tolerant than others, but not so much that a relationship would have been impossible. No. The Loser needed that first girlfriend in his youth that he never had. He needed to be able to overcome his gimp let and oily skin enough to ask a girl out. If he had done that several times and one he liked went out with him, he would have made the usual mistakes, said the dumb things everyone does, and been chastised, maybe even rejected from them. He would have learned from those mistakes and sought companionship again. He would have been comfortable with intimacy, with touching another, with sharing and communicating. 

The gist is this: Single losers aren't single because they have poor social skills. They have poor social skills because they're single.