If the definition of a successful heterosexual relationship is one that lasts a long while, then I’ve pretty much been an embodiment of failure my whole life. I’m thinking it couldn’t hurt to review this life-long pattern from time to time. If you find this sort of thing icky or tedious, fine — don’t read it. But I have a lot of stored-up material, and some of it may translate into worthwhile reading. Or not.

My basic problem is that in the realm of serious, committed relationships I’ve always been emotionally and spiritually attracted to women of character, steel and substance, which is to say strong, smart, bossy women like my mother. But for whatever reason I’ve always felt less than fully “attracted” to these women on a long-term basis, and so sooner or later — sadly, lamentably — the sensual, Henry Miller or Anais Nin-type currents have always seemed to fall away.

I’ve always completely trusted and valued the various mother-figure types, but I’ve always had a strange concurrent thing for exotic fruit — unhappy or bothered women, passionate loonies like my late sister, impulsive poet-kooks, MILFs when I was in my teens and 20s, kamikaze women, curvy fly-by-nighters and gloomheads of various shapes and modes.

[Click through to full story on HE-plus]