The search for love goes on...and on...twenty years and counting!

Whoever first wrote that Men are from Mars but Women are from Venus clearly had a love life along the lines of mine. The older I get the more alien-like an increasing number of men seem to be. Surely finding a nice, attractive, sane man who thinks I am fun and fabulous (admittedly with my quirks and all) shouldn’t be this hard.

Hormones first kicked in for me around 14 so I was horrified to realise a few days ago that I have now been searching for love, spectacularly unsuccessfully, for twenty years now. Twenty years!! Of dates where conversation has revolved around how he only really finds leggy blondes attractive (yes, in heels I just hit 5’ 2” and I have black hair!); dinner where I knew before the starters arrived that we had run out of things to talk about completely and we painfully sat in abject silence as the couple at the next table inadvertently highlighted our awkwardness with the constant laughter and crack of electricity between them; a date where I was called Louise, Lucy and Laura in one night (none of which remotely even resemble my name!!). I have even been abandoned half way through one date - I kid you not, he went to get us drinks and just never returned! I comforted myself that maybe he had dropped dead in the loo a better option than just being deserted surely? Twenty years on the hunt for love so to paraphrase Charlotte York “I’m tired, where is he?!”

Just a few weeks ago I was full of hope as I started 2010 floating on air having met someone who seemed to fit the bill. Grinning from ear to ear I told my family and friends he was everything the men of my past were not – loving, attentive and open about his feelings. Unfortunately I have since discovered he was being just as loving, attentive and open with his feelings with several other women as well as me (six others that I have heard about to date – God, I wish I was making this stuff up). Let’s just say I have come down to earth with a huge bump! It was the hardest of reality checks to discover my man was less James Bond international hunk and lover and more Austin Powers International Man of Mystery. This guy brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “he wasn’t the man I thought he was.” Not at all what I had in mind when I fell for his sexy accent and smooth lines, or should I say lies.

So people, I ask you, how is that a girl who loves life, is told she is fun, kind and intelligent and socialises regularly in a buzzing city fails to meet even one decent man in two decades? I have been dumped on a first date, had wonderful friends turn into lovers then into the largest of losers and even once went away for a weekend only to return to the news he had met a new girlfriend who he preferred to me. For years I thought there was something wrong with me but a steady combination of patient friends who refuted my claim and ongoing therapy convinced me I am not the problem – the common denominator in the comedy show that is my love life, yes, but not the problem! No I have realised there are plenty of people out there in a similar situation to my own. Good people who have lots of love to give but no one seems to want it! Lovely ladies who are despairing as time passes, disaster after disaster befalls them and loser after loser walks out of their life. As we get older and more and more people around us have settled down my increasingly fewer single friends and I talk about this often. Where did it all go wrong we ask ourselves? But then I think of the loons who walked away and realise they did me a favour. Do I want to spend my life with a guy who loves his reflection in the mirror more than me? Or who is mean with money, time and love? Or a guy with a roving eye? Hell no, I would rather be single forever than compromise myself and my happiness for them. Life alone isn’t so bad at after all!

Detouring along the way....

I once read that life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. In my case it seems to be what happens unintentionally while I am busy planning to be cool, calm and sophisticated. On paper it should all be so simple - I am an intelligent woman who loves her family, friends, job, fashion, football and socialising. So far, so normal. On theory I should be able to sail through lifes lumps and bumps fairly unscathed. Instead I have always been the girl who falls off her stillettoes, falls foul off her financial advisors and definitely falls for the wrong men!!

In recent months as various disasters have befallen me I have been on the receiving end of comments like "another mad you story!" and "that's gas, so typical calamity Jules!" Excuse me? When I set out on the road of life I pictured myself more like a young (friendlier) Anna Wintour rather than disaster prone Bridget Jones. How did this happen? I was going to be clad in chic Chanel pumps and a cute shift dress as I sailed around town in my soft top VW Beetle. How did I end up in wrecked biker boots, a skirt always a tad too short and driving a Micra that insists on opening it's own boot at every inopportune moment? Hmm, something went awry along the way. Life is never as smooth as I thought it would be when I set off on the path of adulthood all those distant years ago. But hey, I'm a girl who lights a candle rather than curse the darkness (let's hope I don't set my curtains on fire with said candle now!!) so om going to share my musings on life with you, disasters included. I will be pondering life as a single and searching thirties girl attempting to navigate the dating scene in a seemingly ludicrously small gene pool of decent men; I will muse on career issues, financial strains (and my associated passion for fashion!!) People if it happens to me, you'll read about it here. If you're on the look out for love don't despair, I will bet my tales of woe will cheer you up; if finances are pressuring you be comforted in knowing I have on more than one occasion paid for minimum limit petrol in copper coins gathered from the back of my sofa and if you're sailing happily through life? Well, feel free to be glad you're not me ;)