Flirting with Romance. Again.

Let's just say I haven't been very lucky in love.

My very first boyfriend of 8 months, and the the thief of my virginity - teaching me pleasure is not for women as he did. Well, let's just say he drove me stark raving man and one day, in a pair of my aunt's cowboy boots, I kicked the shit of his little blue Uno. And deservedly so.

The next, a photographer. We met at a book launch I had organised, him the photographer for the event and it was passion at first sight. That very first evening, back at his, we made love and I cried after, for the sweet relief of experiencing true and unadulterated pleasure for the first time. And neither did we leave his single bed the next day, rain pouring outside.

But he never told me he loved me.

He said it was a 'social construct' and for all I loved him, he was a difficult man to love. Pedantic and stubborn and often controlling as he tried to mould me into what he imagined a better model of myself.

We broke up over chicken soup I guess. I was gravely ill and he was dashing out the door to go bargain bin shopping with his best friend, just he and a girl who had always made me feel the third wheel. I decided then and there that I deserved chicken soup. Or dumplings. Someone truly by my side when I was feeling rotten. And I loved him still and for a year, I sobbed as I folded napkins at my evening job as a manageress. God, I loved him.

Next, a man (or rather 'manchild') who professed for two years he felt too depressed to decide whether or not he loved me. A mommy's boy to speak plain who knew not nor perhaps cared to cook or clean up once in a while. But I was in a rut. I stuck it out until I was rudely dumped over a phonecall.

Thereafter followed a secret affair with an old family friend, 20 years my senior. Perhaps I loved him most of all for I still think of him, perhaps even love him, to this day. He nursed me through a grave depression indeed.

Cooking nourishing meals every night. Letting me sleep in. Caring for me, tenderly, for all he was an abrupt German. And by my own turn, I came to respect his small rituals.

Waking a little later, he always left coffee on the stove for me and for this I afforded him the absolute silence he desired as he went over the stock shares with his own morning coffee. The same silence applied after all the work he had done in his garage for the afternoon, and he reclined in a cushy chair, alongside me in the other, the two of us enjoying a cold beer.

He may have been abrupt, and most certainly to the outside world but to me, he had a soul that loved beauty. He toiled all mornings, once up and about in his garden, of cacti and jasmine and succulents and vegetables alike.

He cradled me warmly when we watched movies in bed together. And before and by night, we played chess and read to each from Love is a Hound from Hell by Bukowski. And always by the indoor fire he kept roaring for us.

Once he chose a book for me, a Murakami book, serendipitous, not knowing my love of Murakami. But sadly, the more beautiful I attempted to preen for him, with the male attention that followed, the more his jealousy raged and one day, left like a hooker on the side of the road as he roared off to run errands, that was the end of us.

Finally, the fiance. Another man 20 years my senior.

I wanted a simple life. Content in the small cottage we had found on a small holding surrounded by a beautiful and wild garden of milkwoods and parsley and wild garlic. A market just down the road in walking distance every Saturday for locals who sold everything from bespoke jewellery to silver tumblers to fresh produce from their garden's yield.

But sadly, as it turned out, and he finally found a better job, it was the finer things he sought. And I wasn't included. He gave me a month's notice on the cottage we were renting and took it all, all but an opal and garnet ring I no longer wanted to wear.

Of course there have been dalliances here and there, but none to really speak.

Beyond, an abusive relationship, both physically and emotionally, that I find not the energy to write of. Or perhaps it is the shame.

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For so long, I felt that love had to be earned, through endless acts of service. So often, after a relationship had ended, wondering who the hell I truly was...

What was it that defined me anymore?

But I can gladly say now I am a different creature altogether.

I have my own expectations. And they must be met. For is that not fair?

Compromise yes. Yet we each and everyone has an essence, a sincerity to us, something that must remain true, our own guiding compass that mustn't veer off course no matter how smitten! And I finally feel strong enough to maybe... Just maybe... Flirt with love once more.

And hopefully no more ever after.

And my heart smells ever so faintly the bitter orange blossom, the neroli, the nuptial gift...

Love for Three Oranges by Eileen Monaghan Whitaker