Perhaps I should have been born a woman, or putting it less dramatically - I'm making a point and not an admission about gender uncertainty, after all - had a better smattering of the common sense and practicality that most ( not all, there are exceptions) of my women friends seem to have.

There's a resolution in so many of my women friends that I admire. They set a plan, and kick start it into action, steering it through all weathers until it's done.

I thought about this last night during a dinner with the woman who I've chased after like an eager young pup and pined over for almost a decade.

She has paid off her mortgage. Ground-breaking? Probably not, these things happen all the time, but to do so in half the time required, well that's something else.

I saw a face of quiet satisfaction, something of the job well done look, as she told me. It had been hard, she said, especially in the early years, with many things sacrificed, but she had steadily chipped away at mortgage, using any spare money she had, along with an adroit eye to making the most of whatever mortgage deals were available.

Then one day, there was nothing left to pay, nothing left to do, other than wonder where to store the mortgage deeds.

I've known for a long time that she's been disappointed by me; that's the wrong term in fact, there's something temporary about disappointment, it goes eventually, it's a state, not a permanent condition, you can return to favour.

Her view of me, on the other hand, has changed, likely irrevocably.

Of course, saying I disappointed her presupposes the question that I ever was in her thoughts, however I suspect I was, less from things said and more from how they were expressed

That's the felt evidence, there's also the concrete and undeniable evidence: I heard her say to her best friend that I was: " A typical man. Can't commit"

I'm staying in the same house where she said that. The area of the room where she said that is still radioactive for me. I can see it, how we were stood, the three of us. The image is seared into my mind. It will not go.

I'm sure I must have looked gormless, and perhaps a little shocked too. I had always secretly hoped she would extend some sign, I'm perpetually timid, a shy woodland animal in these areas, lacking the confidence to say how I feel, so a sign, like a dropped handkerchief in some 16th century chivalric poem was what I always hoped for. And I got one: the crystallised realisation that in her eyes I was no more than the common herd of men. Homo non-commiticus.