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If you don't have sex, you're not going to get the woman pregnant. If she becomes pregnant anyway, you know it's not your child, and you can disclaim paternity (and prove non-paternity, if necessary) immediately. Many of the child-suppport cases involving non-fathers have turned on the statute of limitations.

That doesn't work in my hometown. As I've said, there are a couple of people around here who've been stuck with the child support bill after their girlfriends went and cheated on them and got pregnant. I could seriously be dating some girl, not having sex with her, then she could go have sex with some other guy, get pregnant, and stick me with the bill. It could happen. It has happened. It's well within the realm of possibility.

I suspect the young man in the article left DNA behind, even if he says he didn't complete the act, as it were.

No doubt that he did. He, however, is guilty until proven innocent.

If you don't have sex with a woman, the chance of her charging you with rape is mighty small, and the chance of a charge making it to prosecution is even smaller.

Small, yes. Empirical evidence suggests that it's perhaps not as small as we'd like to think.

Yes, the worst, unlikely outcome is a possibility in any relationship ... but you can choose to live in fear of that, or you can choose not to.

It's not fear. It's more of a prudence thing.

Look, you shouldn't take it personally. Most women are fine people. There are few, I think, that would do something like this. But there are enough bad apples, unfortunately, to spoil the bunch and I find nearly impossible to sort them out. I'm just hoping that one will come along that's right for me that, somehow, I'll know that I can trust. She will be the one for me, but clearly, that's unlikely.

A girlfriend can't "cheat," as there is no reasonable expectation of fidelity in that relationship. Just a quibble ...

I don't take any of it personally. I just, as an outside observer, have the impression that you've gone beyond prudence to paranoia. But maybe not ... statistically-improbable bad stuff does happen to some people, or we wouldn't have the stories. On the other hand (the third hand?) we have no proof that all the stories are true.