Over the question of male premarital conduct, it was clear that dual standards prevailed. I did not expect to be a virgin at the time of meeting whomever was to become my future wife; and I knew perfectly well that it was not expected of me within the particular social stratum in which I had been raised, where young men were generally expected to `sow their wild oats', even if disposed towards fidelity in subsequent marriage. I found this clearly indicated by virtually all the girls that I first dated. They had been told by their parents to anticipate there would have been some libertine experimentation within the lifestyles of their young escorts. They were merely concerned that it shouldn't continue after a suitable degree of intimacy had been established between themselves.

My earliest sex life followed what was regarded within these circles as nothing out of the ordinary - which is to say that I indulged in a fair amount of homosexual games prior to the age of puberty; (thoroughly sensual, but discretion forbids that I recount too much of any of that.) Then while at Eton, I was accused erroneously of having such a relationship with a boy (older than myself), whom I only knew by sight, and not even by name until after the scandal had broken. But the humiliation of such public `exposure' had the effect of traumatising me on the whole prospect of homosexual intercourse with anyone ever again. I resolved at that point in time that, no matter what other sexual fields I might decide to pioneer, I'd leave such endeavours on the homosexual front to others, who might perhaps (but not necessarily) be better fitted for it.

I was a slow starter when it came to any real heterosexual fulfilment. Having failed to lose my virginity at the age of 17, on a trip to the South of France which had been intended for that purpose, I fared rather better (at a price) once I was doing my National Service in the Life Guards; but I was 19 by then, and it was still a couple of years before I was indulging in love relationships. But even then there was a problem in that I was deferential to their insistence that the hymen (that symbol of devout virginity) should remain intact, which of course created huge barriers preventing me from any sense of true fulfilment in such sexual intercourse.

When the time finally came that I was copulating with a girlfriend in the manner for which our bodies had been evolved, I was by that time labouring at a disadvantage; for these girlfriends had never been treated with the same deference that I had previously given to others. So I was entering the relationships as the more inexperienced partner, which was somehow damaging to my macho self-esteem. I had to accept it of course, but it made me feel uncomfortable in those relationships.

That brings me to the time when I was endeavouring to rethink my whole attitude to life - the period of relative reclusion after coming down from Oxford. I was trying to determine the conditions, in a relationship with any girl that might enable me to feel psychologically comfortable in it. I saw that I was going to have to accept that the girls of any interest that I met were now always liable to have had wider sexual experience than myself. The advice I was once given (by someone considerably older, whom I respected,) that it was just a question of driving myself to catch up on their total of love affairs, simply wasn't as easy as he'd made it sound. I was becoming inhibited in my efforts to seduce, because I feared that my relative inexperience would immediately be perceived.

I eventually found myself formulating a solution, which came closer than anything previously, to furnishing me with the means to place myself upon a platform of equality with the women I might hope to seduce. All right, I could accept their wider knowledge of sexual relationships; but I wouldn't give myself quite so wholeheartedly to the spiritual blend. I would do my best to become all that was expected of me in terms of the personality they were hoping to find in me, not from any act of falsehood on my part, but simply from a concern to be of value to that person. On the other hand there was perhaps now a small part of me that I was concerned to keep in reserve - someone who might be described as standing just behind the scene, and observing all that was going on.

Now this `Me' in reserve could afford to develop more than one relationship at a time, endeavouring in each to become the person that my partner might want me to be, and essentially to become of real value to her, while taking pleasure in the fact that this was so. But I could afford to conduct several of these relationships simultaneously - not secretively, for I was already endeavouring to live by the rule of `candour'. And the more such relationships I could effectively keep going, within a state of mutually stimulating value, the more I could dismiss from my mind the relative disadvantage over experience which might have troubled me at the outset.