When you talk about dogs and girls I feel your speaking from experiance. As a married man yourself you must consider yourself lucky. Relative to groups like singles and the divorced married people generally report the highest levels of self reported mental health. Especially when those relationships last. (moderated by having kids around the house. It's a negative relationship.)

My experiance is this. Having sex does seem to fill a deep need, but I've also been alone for a lot of my life. When I was a kid I felt socially isolated, and I worked very hard to understand the people around me, and to learn how to be a friend. After I dropped out, my friends all had girlfriends, and I saw the advantages of a loving relationship, but they didn't get out much, and I can't help but think it limited the diversity of their social experiences. It felt like it limited mine.

I got this job working the night shift at a hotel. During the winter especially, there were times I would only see the morning clerk as they checked in, and the evening clerk as they checked out. Then I would go to sleep, my roommates would wake up, they would go to sleep, I would wake up.

Rinse and repeat.

I used the time to improve myself, and eventually got a job for the government. Everyone was at least ten years older than me. I made a point of keeping a sociable attitude, but I also kept my ear buds in most of the time.

Then, when I was going back to school I got a job serving tables at this Mexican restaurant. hilariously enough, there were no employees! Often it would be me and the primarily Spanish speaking cook. We would serve like 18 tables at a time. Bantering with costumers was good, but I didn't make many close friends.

This isn't the whole story or the end of it, but I guess what I'm saying is this period in my life taught me that it was okay to be alone. People who are often single generally really do relatively well along the life course, despite what people will tell you.

So I'll wait and see who comes along. It really is easy to tell when someone likes you. But I'm in no rush to get back into a relationship. I really need to concentrate on school. Thanks for listening, and thanks for the kind advice. Really it just makes me more curious about you.