Desperation. It's unseemly, so much we all know. So when Svetlana sat me down next to her on the burgundy velvet sofa of a her opulent 18 century hotel room in Roland Gardens (pupils dilated, somewhat unsteady and voice deliberate with exhaustion) and told me never to despair after men, I knew exactly what she meant. Or, at least, I thought I did.
Youth can be the most powerful of opiates. Though absolute freedom and immortality are intelligibly impossible postulates, one still behaves with the carelessness of a free immortal. Time is cheap, so wasting it is less of a concern. This is no less true when it comes to pursuing romantic relationships. One gets more attached to a feeling, and high, than whether or not the partner in question is a long-term likelihood. One wastes a shocking amount of time with horrible matches, all to be labelled in retrospect as "learning experiences".
But most of us grow older, and realise how much time we've wasted on these lamentable "learning experiences". We hope they've equipped us with the knowledge of what it is we are looking for. We hope that the ship has not yet sailed and that there is room for two more passengers on board. Some of us keep hoping for a long, long time.
I've gotten a bit older. And with my 26th birthday I suddenly feel an unusual push towards finding a long-term, stable relationship. Not necessarily one that lasts forever, but one that I can benefit from and whose wide, protective leaves I can grow under for at least a few years to come. Haven't you heard? It is no longer about finding the right man – rather, in reality it tends to be when a man finds you during the right time.
Enter Ronald (circa 2 weeks ago), a handsome 30 year-old English corporate lawyer from London. Sophistication drips from the very consonants he enunciates with his received pronunciation. And, despite his Downton Abbey-esque exclamations in the boudoir ("genuinely extraordinary!"), coitus has proved to be a forte. In a lot of ways, he's perfect.
I'm not wildly in love with Ronald. I think he's very attractive and I enjoy the time we spend together. I want more, but I am not obsessing about it or aching for it. That worried me at first, but then I realised, in all my "learning experiences" where I have been insanely head-over-heels and pining for someone it has always come to a crashing end. This is an opportunity to take things slow and see where they go as a mature adult. Maybe in time I will fall in love with him. But that time is not now, and not for a while.
Besides, dating another lawyer already seem a little polygamous. We both fall asleep hugging each other and our blackberries.
