Toby Young on Marriage

From How to Lose Friends and Alienate People:

Up until this point I'd been a confirmed bachelor. I'd briefly considered asking Syrie to marry me but had decided against it on the grounds that I'd be sacrificing far too much. I'd asked myself the following question: Am I ready to give up the possibility of having hot, monkey sex with a string of drop dead killer bimbos in order to settle down and get married? Obviously, the answer was no.

Needless to say, it's only men with girlfriends who have this rose-tinted view of single life. For some reason, we all imagine that if only we weren't shackled to the old ball and chain we'd be living the life of Hugh Hefner. Because Hef managed to pull it off, every sad sack with a dressing gown thinks that living in a mansion in Beverly Hills with a harem of topless lovelies is, at some level, an option. Consequently, when we're weighing up the pros and cons of getting married we never think of the alternative as a solitary, miserable existence punctuated by Stouffer's Chicken A La King and Jenna Jameson videos. Rather, it's always an Austin Powers fantasy in which we're a finger-clicking lothario surrounded by a bevy of min-skirted blondes.

After a tour of duty in Manhattan, all my illusions about the joys of being single had gone. There's something immature and a little sad about wanting to sleep with a different woman every night, particularly if you've only had about five one night stands in your life. In your mid-thirties, chasing sixteen-year-old Swedish schoolgirls is undignified, not to mention illegal in the United States.