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One of the most important principles for choosing a lover sensibly is not to feel in any hurry to make a choice.
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Being satisfied with being single is a precondition of satisfactory coupledom.
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We cannot choose wisely when remaining single feels unbearable.
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We have to be utterly at peace with the prospect of many years of solitude in order to have any chance of forming a good relationship, or we'll love no longer being single rather more than we love the partner who spared us being so.
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Unfortunately, after a certain age, society makes singlehood feel dangerously unpleasant.
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Communal life starts to wither.
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People in couples are too threatened by the independence of the single to invite them around very often in case they're reminded of something they might have missed.
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Friendship and sex are, despite all the gadgets, still remarkably hard to come by.
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No wonder if when someone slightly decent, but not quite so, comes along, we cling to them to our eventual, enormous cost.
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When sex was only available within marriage, people recognized that this would lead some people to marry for the wrong reasons --- to obtain something that was artificially restricted in society as a whole.
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Sexual liberation was intended to allow people to have a clearer head when choosing who they really wanted to be with, but this process remains only half finished.
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Only when we can make sure that being single is potentially as secure, warm and fulfilling as being in a couple will we know that people are choosing to pair up for the right reasons.
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It's time to liberate companionship from the shackles of coupledom, and make it as widely and as easily available as sexual liberators wanted sex to be.
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In the meantime, we should strive to make ourselves as much at peace as we can with the idea of being alone for a very long time.
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Only then do we stand a chance of deciding to be with someone on the basis of their own and true merits.