[admitting faults] who can do it?

Was there ever a psychological exercise so difficult and so fraught with self-delusion, outright deception and lies as admitting one's faults?

And even if we do make the journey on the long road to self-knowledge and self-acknowledgment, can we then allow others to see these? To admit anything is a one way street and if even one single little error is admitted to a spouse or lover, it's immediate ammunition in the partner's next fight.

And even if we are so confident in ourselves that we don't worry about what anyone says, don't we still put a sheen, a gloss, a well-intentioned, self-forgiving tone to the admission? And admit only that which others will look at and say: "Oh, James, that's no fault at all." Then we can puff ourselves up, having assuaged our egos.

Quite frankly, in marriages, when she [because I'm a man but the other way for the girls] adds my slightest admission that I may have been wrong to her list of self-vindicatory bullets for next time, it's sickening and the result is NO further admissions whatsoever and watching your back for any surreptitious move to manouver you into said admission.

The nausea is then complete when she sweetly demands that we should be open and honest with each other because she "loves honesty in a man". Sorry, sister, I made one admission and it was used against me. I'm not an idiot to do it again.

Unfortunately, this state of affairs is the beginning of the end - actually a bit further on than the beginning. A partner who needs, absolutely must have Right on her side the whole time and is forever jockeying into a position of Power over her man is going to consume the other and as Helen Rowland said in 1922:

A husband is what is left of a lover once the nerve has been extracted.

Except that my nerve was not extracted - it became a brick wall at which she repeatedly flung herself until she gave it up and left. So now, with the pressure off and no woman on the horizon, I can make a few admissions I hope freely, on the grounds that I don't care any more.

Perhaps this is one of the purposes of a blog - useful things, blogs.

The two things I've been most accused of are passivity and obstinacy. Not in public life - you can judge for yourselves here. No, I mean in the relationship because I see a relationship, not as a war [or ever onwards and upwards] but as a haven, somewhere to withdraw to after the day's vicissitudes are done with.

As I offer an open pair of arms when we meet, so I expect the same, not to be met with a barrage of "did you phone this person" or "did you buy this - oh you forgot!". The moment I hear that sort of thing, I withdraw into myself and go and do something like wash the car or visit a client.

Some years ago a friend told me of coming home after work, stopping at the door and not being able to go inside that door because of the embittered disdain he'd have to endure until next morning and the shouting match which would ensue.

He admitted he might have been the cause of much of it but still - that was the prospect he faced each evening and so he went elsewhere for the night.

That was the beginning of the end.

So admitting faults is a minefield. Here's another - I don't mind her flirting as much as she wants at work where I can't see it or getting up at the café and chatting for a few minutes to some Adonis or even the occasional evening out with some man to break the monotony and the less she wanted, the more I'd be open to it and here we get to another criticism of me - she told me more than once that I gave her too much freedom, which I'm still puzzling over.

What did she mean - that she couldn't trust herself or that she resented that I didn't need her 24/7?

Another criticism came from my mate who asked me, after chatting to her for some minutes, "How central are you to her world?" He added, "I don't mean materially."

That was the beginning of the end.

Jealousy must appear on the list somewhere and the hypocrisy here is astounding. I took a girl out once, held her hand across the table and kissed her and her conversation was about how her guy would be "jealous of a tree". She was full of how she was an independent person and if she wanted to go out with me, she was a free agent and so on. I pitied him, really I did and admit what it said about me too at the time.

Surely it comes down, in the end, to how much that person loves you and how much space you'll allow her, confident in the invisible and elastic ties that bind her heart and not in any external demands on her.

Nowadays I'm over-sensitive to this and if the relationship looks a goer but the nuances are unmistakable that she still likes to play the field after my charm has failed to do its work, it's time to up sticks and move on. Trouble is - women like to play the field these feminist days, free to go out whenever and with whomever they like but I won't accept this social contract. No way.

And to say this would be stifling is to misread these comments. The less she demanded, the more I'd give. That's what it's about.

This is why I plan to remain alone - not because I want to play the field [because in the end it comes down to a lot of froth and bubble flirting and no more] and not because I'm in any way celibate and not because no woman will go out with me but because I need far more than a lover - I need a companion to laugh and go side by side and enjoy things with.

We can do business.

I had a difference of opinion with a woman the other day - she was arguing that men were so much better and I was arguing that women were so much better and we both realized we might be able to do business on that basis.

Except that she's married, lucky guy.