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As for the sex revolution, it is not all that it is gossiped to be. For one thing, only a relatively small proportion of the total single population participates. John H. Gagnon of Indiana University's Institute for Sex Research points out that 50% of all brides are still virgins, and another 25% have slept with only their prospective mate. Says Gagnon: "The bulk of intercourse continues to be oriented toward marriage. We haven't passed any sexual watershed." For every modern swinger, there is an untold number of the merely forlorn. The ratio is as old as mankind, unrecorded and unrecordable, but it is roughly the ratio of glamour girls to plain Janes. Today's plain Janes have opportunities their spinster aunts never did—trips to Europe, a Peace Corps assignment in Asia, interesting jobs in research or government. And in all of these places, they have a chance to display a mettle that may attract a man who might otherwise have been addled by a momentary attraction to a dumb blonde. But many of them end up living lives of quiet desperation, punctuated by pathetic sorties to dating clubs or organized dances or singles weekends. Despite the frenetically gay ads, these are often exercises of last resort. An ad for a weekend at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills offers an insight into the dark side of the single life. Promising a phantasmagoria of pleasures, the ad saves its ultimate weapon for the end. "This," it says, "may be your last 'singles party.' "
The side that this approach appeals to is well analyzed in quite familiar terms by Judy McKeown, at 23 a TV personality in Chicago and still single: "You can go out every night with a different guy, but after a while you're bound to get tired of it, because all the running around you're doing is in a circle. Really, you don't get anything. You don't get to learn anything about people. You'll find six months of it is a very long time. After that, you're asking yourself, 'What's going on? What's it all about?' " The more lasting relationships that the singles develop are based on their own standards, even if they contrast sharply with those upheld by, say, the late Dorothy Dix, who told a young girl asking for advice: "Why should he marry you after six months if he can get what he wants now? Do you really believe he will marry you after he's had you for a while?" The modern single's answer is yes, and if he does not, there is something wrong with the relationship and it is just as well that he doesn't.