I find dating difficult per se. Without necessarily wanting to, we tend to look at people like objects. Basically, it would be nice if one could outwit oneself and simply be interested in a friendship without having sexual or financial considerations and expectations. Once sex is in play, it changes the whole process of a friendship beginning. It has become almost impossible for me to consider myself as the young woman I once was, who placed so much emphasis on the erotic aspect of a relationship. After that it was the family, I really wanted to start a big patchwork family after my marriage broke up. All these temporary wishes and expectations are gone now and I don't really mourn them anymore. Inside, I think if I really wanted it that way, I would have done a lot more for it than I actually did. It seems that I preferred an independent life and found a certain distance between myself and my man good. Sometimes I accused myself of making it too easy for myself and considering myself selfish. Then again I thought that we live in a world where individuality dominates.

When you decide you want to feel close to someone and get to know a man. Is it really the case that you hurt the other when you tell him that you don't want an intimate relationship with him? Isn't friendship possible just like with other women? Why do you have to go your separate ways when it turns out that you like each other, but you don't enter into sexual and financial relationships with each other? I think we sell ourselves too cheap if we arrange to meet and then say to each other after a few dates that we are not interested.

I myself don't want to be considered by the opposite sex in such a way that I am only a worthy friend if the relationship goes ahead in all respects. If men and women just check each other out from the start, evaluate their value and then find they are not good enough, then we are like objects in a supermarket shelf.

I think an interest is something organic. When I get to know a man, for example, in his profession, see what he deals with, what his hobbyhorse is, and we find each other through this interest in something, there is a chance that an organic relationship will begin to grow. I therefore believe that it is wise to turn to one's own field of interest and not to be interested in each other but in the object of our common interest.

In fact, I think that if, for example, I am an archaeologist and a man I work with is a photographer of archaeological sites, then this common interest would let us find each other. Because we don't look at the man but at what he is passionate about.

... Oh, it's really complicated. I don't know if I could make myself understood?

You really address very deep and complex topics.