I recently read a quote in Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas along the lines of “eventually, every woman fools around with a married man.” I am the exception to this rule. It’s not necessarily a moralistic thing (if people are going to cheat, they’re going to cheat, who am I to stop them?), but rather a headache thing. As in, who needs it? I’ve lived my life thus far avoiding any Glenn Close types cooking my bunny rabbit and I prefer to keep it that way.

With married men clearly in the “no” category, I assumed determining the difference between available and unavailable would be pretty easy. When my married friends started pimping their male friends to me I resisted at first. I was eventually swayed by all of his glowing attributes and the assumption that as long as it wasn’t their husbands who were being pimped, I was probably safe. As soon as I would agree to meet the man, the pimping stopped and the topic would be avoided. When pressed, the friend admitted she didn’t want to share her backup boyfriend. This happened not once, but three times. And I thought my single friends were the promiscuous ones.

When my single friends offered to introduce me to their discards or male friends, I assumed I was finally in safe territory. They never seemed to have a shortage of dates/sexual partners, have several back-ups when in need, and the men they were introducing me to weren’t in either category.

After many, many reassurances I was given the green light to get together with a friend of a friend. About a week after our second rendezvous, the friend decided the five guys she was dating weren’t right for her and that she had missed her calling when discarding the man she referred me to. I told her that was fine and there were no hurt feelings. She changed her mind a day later, but I wouldn’t initiate another date with him. It wasn’t worth jeopardizing a friendship over.

Other single friends offer to introduce me to men, but I rarely respond. I am finally learning that my friends’ husbands/boyfriends are actually more available than the other men they know. I just had it backwards.

An acquaintance from out of town recently emailed me to ask if I was dating anyone. Oh no, here we go, I thought to myself. But curiosity always gets the best of me so I asked a few pertinent questions such as “Does he live in the city, because I don’t commute?” Once I was reassured that he lives within five miles of me, I continued on with other potential deal breakers such as crazy exes, fear of kids, inability to express himself or being under five foot five. He passed all of these hurdles, but before I agreed to meet him I explained my previous predicaments with being set up. She laughed and said, “Listen, I don’t even live in Washington so I’m not about to get all weird and jealous about you dating him. And even if I did, I don’t know you well enough to admit that to you.” And with that, we had a deal. And I entered a fourth possible dating arena: acquaintances’ (as long as they live far away) backup boyfriends.

Corbin Lewars is a writing mentor, the founder of Reality Mom and author of Creating a Life (Catalyst Book Press, 2010) and the forthcoming, After Glow. She teaches memoir and personal essay writing classes in Ballard as well as resides here with her two children.