Many men live, sometimes for years, without a relationship. Worse: without anything like a love life or a sex life at all. Some of them voluntarily, many not at all. It is important to stay sane and more or less satisfied with your life then. It is also important to remain good friends with well-meaning women and to not turn misogynist.

And that is not easy. You can simply try some detached attitude to life, that may be part of the answer, but I think often more is possible and necessary. You don’t even have to resign to the idea of remaining celibate forever and can still live a more or less satisfying life while you still are. These advices may help to create the best mindset for that:

- women have the perfect right to reject you. All the same, you have the right to think they are wrong when they do that and even make a big mistake. That certainly doesn’t mean you should persevere, neither try again when the opportunity looks better; though especially the latter is certainly not forbidden and more a practical than a moral issue. But the main thing is that the rejection shouldn’t make you feel a grain worse about yourself than you did before.

- you also have the right to express your disappointment when you’re rejected, provided you make perfectly clear it is not meant in an accusatory or blackmailing way. It can simply be a relief and a well-meaning woman should realize that.

- In general: though you must always be open to criticism or self-criticism, realize that nobody has the authority to judge you in an absolute way, whether you’re in love with them or not. You don’t have to protest openly but you’re entitled to have your own thoughts about it.

- No matter how enchanted you are about somebody’s physical or personal attributes, don’t let that be the cause of them getting any power over you. A woman may not do that malevolently or even consciously, but yes, that can happen, and it’s up to you to prevent it by staying alert.

- I’ll put this very carefully: virtually every woman, no matter how non-feminist or men-friendly she is, will show behavior that looks illogical, inconsequential and even irresponsible to you. And on the other hand: she will very often think some of your behavior, speech or thoughts, no matter how well-meaning you are, a little creepy or depraved or whatever. This may sound sexist for some, but actually this helps me to be less angry with women, forgive them and have more peace with them. They’re facts of life, whether culturally or biologically determined, and blaming anybody is fruitless.

- Enjoy the beauty and attraction of women in real life, in photos and films, don’t feel ashamed of that. But as soon as admiring them gives you a frustrated, sad, or angry feeling, stop it for the moment and try to shift your attention to other interesting subjects. Make sure there are enough interesting subjects in your life. They don’t have to be awesome: sometimes funny little things, when you think of them at the right moment, can be enough.

You see, this is neither an advice to expect nothing from life, neither an ‘I’m the greatest’- pep talk. Nor am I pretending life will be a bed of roses as soon as you use this as your Bible. But does it make sense, and can people think of other points?