Defence or Pretence?

The dating game is a tricky one. I've done it for over 26 years (David Brown, aged 6, his father gave out the order of service at our local church) and i've been a happy dater, a tearful dater, a supportive dater, a depressed dater, an ecstatic dater, a head-over-heals dater...the list goes on. But now...well, i'm a resigned dater.

Before I even meet people for the first date, i've been through the entire dating phase spectrum in my head, i've analysed the relationship, i've had first-love butterflies, i've found out the pet hates, i've decided those I can live with, i've facebooked his friends and family and decided who i'll like (and more importantly, who I won't), I've got bored of the bad habits, i've fallen out of love and i've resigned myself to singledom again.

It's not that i'm not giving them a chance, in fact i'm not really sure what it is. Half of me thinks that i'm happy, i'm content, i'm successful, i'm popular, I have a fabulous, fun packed life and I share it widely, i'm always busy, i'm rarely lonely and well, i'm just not sure I have a gap that needs filling. The other half of me thinks that I actually crave to share all of this with someone and maybe (I said MAYBE Mam) I would love to have children eventually, but I just cannot be bothered to go out dating again and again and again to repeat the same endless process, eternally searching for or waiting for 'Mr Right for Me'.

If you've read any of my other blog posts, you will know that I'm not prepared to settle for just anyone. I really do think that there is someone for everyone and I am hoping that, at some point, that person will just appear. Their are mixed views on this from my close friends and family. Many say that because i'm so resigned and "closed" to the idea that he is just around the corner, I am dismissing everyone before they have a chance. My feeling is that when he is there, I will know. I just have a funny feeling that I will know.

I often lay at night with this all whizzing around in my head. What if i've missed him? I think about the single guys that have come and been booted out in my life, and I start to re-asses whether or not i'm just not recognising them as 'Mr Right for Me'? I'm thinking that surely, as absolutely everyone I know has either met 'Mr Right for Them', or gone down the single-parent-prefer-children-to-husbands route, I must have missed the one for me? Was he the guy that was staring at me on London Bridge station, then winked as he got onto the Tunbridge Wells train? Should I have given him my number as he edged closer to me for over 20 minutes smiling like a Cheshire Cat. Was it the guy I have known for a over a year that I was supposed to meet for a date 3 months ago, then got drunk with my friends instead?

How do you know this stuff? Does anyone ever know? It seems like everyone knows, but me.

Oh fuck it: As I sit on my clean, huge sofa, surrounded by cats, I look at the beautiful flowers adorning my fireplace, i watch the sun set over the gorgeous white Georgian Terrace opposite, remote control in one hand (for the tv...now, now...!), glass of wine in the other, I wonder if there's ever going to be a time when I both want to share this happy life, or am willing to.