One of the best realizations I had as a teenage boy was that being around girls *didn't* make me lose my self-control.

It did however make me really, really stupid.

I had to recognize that as well -- that I just didn't have a lot of experience points in such matters, so I had to be careful how I acted. But it also means if I do say or do something insensitive, I know it's not because I'm fundamentally a bastard -- it's because half my IQ points were being bypassed by an abruptly diverted flow of blood. And that always made it a hell of a lot easier for me to apologize if I did the wrong thing, because my pride (such as it was) wasn't so much at stake.

(BTW, completely different note -- how do you get your posts to default to purple?)