I went to eleven events and did not speak to anybody at any of them

Everyone tells men to go out and meet people in person. I did. Eleven times over two years I stood in a room full of strangers, and eleven times I left without having managed a real conversation, and on the way home each time I felt worse than when I had arrived.

I am not shy exactly. I can hold a room at work. But those evenings had a code I never cracked, everybody already knew each other, and I could not find the door into any of it.

Forty three, Queens, four years in. I have stopped going, and I want to say publicly that stopping was the right decision rather than a retreat, because the received wisdom says otherwise and made me feel like a coward about it for a year.

Where I am actually good is in writing. Given a month of correspondence I am funny, observant and honest, and three separate people have told me the man in the letters is not the man in the room, and that the man in the letters is better.

So what I want is to start in writing and stay there for a while. A long correspondence, then one quiet meeting with one person rather than forty, and then, if it holds, an arrangement with structure and duties in it. I am not looking to be encouraged to try another event. I have tried eleven. I would rather spend that effort on one person.