The pursuit of intimacy involves the breaking down of distance, and considering how intimacy has grown in danger over the last 25 years, it should be no surprise that distancing has become an art form.

    Distance on the male side -- the notorious fear of commitment coupled with the male urge to sleep with anything that moves -- breaks down far more simply than female distancing: most times he wants to be close, but not that close, if you get my drift.

    Things are far more complex on the female side, where there's distance as a way to avoid pain, distance as a defensive strategy (telling someone you like them can be used against you later) and distance as a passive-aggressive strategy to pleasure.

    I bring up with my female friends the concept of women who show little or no enthusiasm, yet still expect to be chased, wooed and pursued; I discuss this with women and I can see their sexist meters start to go up. I discuss this with men and I get nodded heads and "Amen, brother."

    It took a woman to put this in words for me, how instead of dating as a combination of job interview and audition, it used to be a process of observation, fantasy, felt mutual attraction, and then a decision to proceed. That was the sound bite for which I'd been searching -- "felt mutual attraction."

    In a 90s dating world of coy distance, that feeling of mutual attraction gets disguised under polite arms-length attitudes, and quite frankly, losing that component leaves me lost. Just as a good lawyer never asks a courtroom question to which he doesn't know the answer, never kiss anybody until you know they want to be kissed. Safest rule in the book.

    What I consider useful feedback had been considered by some women in the past as a kind of ego hangup on my end, some sort of failing. I guess it's just another example of the double standards women have to live up to; they are supposed to be cautious, and men are supposed to keep diving in because they are women and therefore they are worth it.

    It's at times like these that I think of all the things guys do in madcap Hollywood romantic comedies, things that in real life would lead to restraining orders. I wonder if distance as an operating environment has more to do with popular culture than the safety-first era of sex in a time of AIDS.

    But then I catch myself, because sometimes answers aren't found on grand global levels, but on small personal ones.

    Think of how many million romantic heartbreaks have occurred over the last 25 years, and how much emotional scar tissue is spread over the dating landscape. Everybody on the dating scene has a reason to be distant, so they are distant, and the resulting distant relationships that come and go don't satisfy, so the distance grows evermore and the entire chance of making an honest connection continues to shrink and shrink and shrink. And we wind up once again with proof of the old adage. Be careful what you pretend to be, for that's what you shall become.

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