“What’s it like to be loved by me?” I asked last night, kind of joking.

“Intense,” he said with a laugh.

“Intense?” I replied, in quite a high pitch. “Intense?” But I couldn’t help laughing along with him.

“Intense isn’t how I’d describe your love,” I said after a while, a little put out. “I’d say it was … hmm … I’d call it … ”

“Steadfast?” he offered.

“Yes, actually, steadfast. That’s a good word. That sums it up. Steadfast,” I answered, feeling reassured.

So my love is intense and dramatic, a bit like me. I’m a person of extremes. I have my emotional peaks and troughs – the peaks are high peaks and the troughs are pretty deep.

My partner, on the other hand, is steady, steadfast, solid.

And I absolutely love that about him, although I wasn’t sure at first.

I thought I needed someone like me. I think I was looking for a carbon copy of myself. I thought I wanted someone intense, dramatic and extreme. I thought that was the best way to be.

But it turns out I needed the opposite. I needed steady, steadfast and reassuring. I needed someone who’d help me feel more peaceful, who’d calm me down. I needed someone who’d be there, consistently.

I’m delighted I matured enough to realise that. I’m delighted I did lots of work on myself. I’m delighted I allowed myself to be transformed through recovery, therapy, studying, reading and sharing so I could understand what I really needed.

And I’m now absolutely delighted to be able to share that journey and everything I’ve learned with others, through this blog, through my book (it’s getting written and I’ll have at least one book out this year, hopefully two – promise) and through my courses.

When I do this work, write my blog, plan my love course, it feels like I’m exactly in the right place, doing exactly what I was meant to do – using my experience, including the heartache, the pain and all the light bulb moments, to help others.

I feel honoured and privileged to be offering ‘How to Fall in Love – A Six-Week Journey to the Heart’,my course for single women that starts this Monday. I feel privileged that seven women so far have put their faith in me, have begun to share their stories and their struggles with me, have seen something in me that they believe can help them on their journey to a happy, healthy, loving relationship with themselves and with a partner.

If this sounds like a journey you’d like to go on, and you’d like to do it in company and with support, I have three places left on the course. There’s still time. Just check out the link and drop me a line.

I was thinking about time today. How it’s our most precious commodity. Along with health and love. Time. Sometimes, when I’m having one of those really loved up moments, I feel a pang of sadness that it took my partner and I so long to get together in a committed way, and that it took so many years for me to find him, for us to find each other. But I’m grateful we’re together now. I’m grateful I resolved all my indecision and made a choice to be with him.

We went on a trip to Lyme Regis today, to walk along the Cobb, eat fish and chips sitting on a wall and to wander around the shops.

Lyme Regis, 2013

And I remembered, vividly, being there a few years before, in 2013, walking on the same promenade with a friend. I remember having a cup of tea with her in the sunshine and talking about my partner, or my ex-partner at that point – we’d got together but then I’d finished it so I wasn’t with him at that time. I remember sharing my indecision, how much I liked him but how I wasn’t sure, how I thought there had to be someone else, someone more suited, someone different, someone who wanted kids, someone more this or more that, someone …

Lyme Regis, 2017

I’m so pleased I worked through all those dilemmas, all those reasons why I thought he wasn’t the right guy, why I didn’t think he was good enough or this enough or that enough. I’m so pleased I made a positive choice to be with him. I’m so pleased I didn’t keep searching for that elusive someone else. And I’m so pleased I get to enjoy his steadfast love – and laugh when he calls me intense.

I hope you too can find the Yin to your Yang.