Why does Krebs want a close relationship with the girls he watches?

Krebs comes back to his hometown later than the other soldiers. He comes back after the townspeople have had enough of the war stories told by the soldiers come back home. He comes back after the furor over the homecoming of the war heroes has died down. The townspeople have heard so many stories told of the “atrocities of the war” that they are not enthralled by Krebs’s stories. He comes back to Oklahoma to find that all the young girls have grown up and are almost strangers to him as they have what the text describes as “well-defined alliances and shifting feuds” that he finds too exhausting to penetrate. However, he likes to watch them because they look really beautiful. He also loves their attires, the “round Dutch collars above their sweaters, their silk stockings and flat shoes.”
Krebs wishes that he could develop a close relationship with the girls he watches, because he finds them attractive. However, he does not want to work hard at getting girls. He is not keen on the courting process and views it as a tedious activity. It seems that Krebs has commitment issues and prefers women who are not conversationalists. The fact that he says that he does not want to shoulder the consequences that come with romantic relationships "again” and that he is uninterested in going through the complications of developing a romantic relationship in his hometown “again” hints at a past painful relationship that he might have had sometime before the war.