Next month I turn 27, which is definitely not an abnormal age during which to be single, but a lot of people in their late 20s are in serious relationships. Many of them are married and own homes and have created children. So people sometimes want to know why I am still single. And why I have been for the past six and a half years.

“There are so many potential reasons,” I say, then sigh before going back to whatever it is I’m doing that doesn’t involve kissing, hand-holding or sex.

Here are just a few:

1. I don’t necessarily enjoy dating at the beginning. First dates are awkward and I often avoid them because it’s difficult for me to sit anxiously through an entire day, looking forward to meeting someone, knowing that it’s probably going to go badly. Maybe I should start doing breakfast meetings for first dates. That way I can get it out of the way.
2. I have this really tough-to-control tendency where I come on way too hard way too early when I like someone, because I’m a dumb asshole who trusts his instincts instead of keeping a level head and engaging in the strategic battle that relationships are, especially in the early stages. Then, when these women distance themselves from me I take it way too seriously and personally and become too petrified of lasting intimacy for the next year or so.
3. Because one time I went on a date and a girl asked me a very basic question and I went off on a diatribe re: how ridiculous it is that people ask simple questions when they can just Google something, during which I backtracked and said I appreciated her decision to not bust her phone out and start Googling while engaging me. Her facial expression said I would never, under any circumstances, be getting to any basics with her.
4. On another date, I got to talking about feminism with a woman and joked that if she were really a feminist she would support my initiative to make “Guys’ Nights” happen at bars that have “Girls’ Nights.” She thought I was serious. My facial expressions don’t’ always accurately depict my intentions.
5. I don’t believe in getting in aesthetically-pleasing shape just so that I can be more attractive. To me, the ratio of time spent in the gym to time getting laid because I am better-looking is too wide for me to buy into it.
6. I generally prefer to sleep alone.
7. My morning breath could probably kill somebody.
8. I sweat profusely. Like, to a startling and disgusting degree. (For example: I start sweating when there is excess body heat in my bed.)
9. The other day a pretty girl tried to bum a smoke from me and I was like ““No! No, you absolutely cannot! I’m already over here killing myself slowly and I don’t need your lungs on my conscience too!”
10. Oh yeah, sometimes I smoke and also I dip. Both of which turn some women off.
11. I am used to snapping one off to porn on account of my perpetual singleness. This creates a vicious cycle, because if I rub one out to porn I’m much more likely to stay in for the night, and much less likely to go out and try to make advances on a woman. It’s like a few minutes of very minimal effort vs. hours of potential rejection. I mean, it’s most likely an addiction. I know this because I just told myself I could stop watching porn if I really want to and then just started cackling at the disingenuous nature of that statement.
12. I am not afraid of commitment, I just detest it.
13. I overthink and overanalyze most things, especially if they are in any way important to me. So when I start to like someone, I tend to think way too much into it. Then I think about how terrible it would be to get close to them and then have a terrible, emotionally damaging breakup and then I unintentionally begin distancing myself, because some part of me would rather go on the way I am than to have my heart broken again.
14. I’m melodramatic. Read 13.
15. Sometimes, my favorite thing to do in the world is to come home after a long day, drink scotch, read, watch some television and speak with nobody. This doesn’t exactly lend itself to meeting potential significant others.
16. My Claddagh ring has had its heart facing outward for so long that now I believe it’s fused to my skin and unable to be turned around to signify that I am in a relationship.
17. I’m fairly certain I have some sort of PTSD from my last relationship. Which was six years ago. (People get divorced and re-married and then divorced again in six years. What the f**k is wrong with me?)
18. I’m a pretty busy guy. Seriously!
19. My jam is generally the slow game. I come at you with mediocre-at-best looks and then attempt to win you over with other positive attributes. Which makes it really fucking difficult to succeed on Tinder, where people swipe left as quickly for someone with leprosy as someone with a double chin.
20. I am neither rich nor famous nor famously well-endowed.
21. I take most of my meals at my desk or in bed and I have no desire to alter this habit.
22. Angry, dissatisfied online commenters have destroyed my self-confidence.
23. I do not believe in fate, so I am more calculated about what I do and who I spend my time with. I don’t meet a girl who is pretty and sort of fun to be around and just accept that we are meant to be together because some unseen force has decided it should be so. Which doesn’t mean that I’m more selective, per se, I’m just more skeptical. Probably to a fault.
24. It is very difficult to settle down when you almost always think that it could be better, and on the rare occasions when you don’t think that it possibly could be better, the person who has helped make things so fantastic leaves you, usually unceremoniously or meanly or a combination of the two.
25. Because she does not love me. Not anymore.