Looking for love

I like Valentine's Day. I always ruminate on love and what makes it blossom - or wither on the vine. It's one of life's eternal mysteries.

I didn't fall in love myself until I met Jenny at the age of 34. I had wanted to fall in love many times but somehow it never quite happened.

I dated plenty of women. I kissed them, cuddled them, sometimes went to bed with them. We swopped our life stories, shared our enthusiasms, laughed at each other's quirks.

Each time I wondered if it was love. But each time it would gradually peter out. As hard as I tried, that vital spark was missing.

What was I doing wrong, I asked myself? Everyone around me was falling in love, finding their soulmate, getting married even. It seemed to come to them so easily. Was I being too fussy? Was I emotionally stunted? Was I afraid of intimacy? Was I really gay? Was I just not the falling-in-love type? I found a hundred reasons for love's elusiveness, but still it failed to find me.

The clock kept on ticking. Birthdays came and went. Likely women entered my life and disappeared from it again. I began to think falling in love must be an illusion.

All these besotted couples aren't really besotted, they're just clinging to each other because it's expected, because they're lonely, because they're desperate. This thing I'm chasing after is a mirage, a dream, a novelist's invention. But it was no good, I still believed in it and I still pursued it.

And then of course I met Jenny. Quite out of the blue, when I was least expecting it, our paths crossed and suddenly something ignited. And the rest, as they say, is history. A surprisingly long and satisfying history. A relationship that just gets deeper and deeper. What was the magic formula? I didn't know then and I don't know now. It's just one of those extraordinary miracles that leaves you gasping.

Cupid's whims

The approach of Valentine's Day always gets me thinking about love and what a mystery it is. Why do we fall in love? Why with X rather than Y? Why do some relationships fail so quickly while others last a lifetime?

Therapists and scientists and writers are constantly looking for the secret of love and its seeming unpredictability but they're still as baffled as ever. Cupid is a capricious little thing and her arrows land in the oddest places.

Who would have guessed, when Jenny and I locked eyes almost 27 years ago, that our tentative hugs and kisses would ignite such an enduring passion? Certainly not us.

We've had plenty of quarrels over the years. In moments of boiling anger or frustration or resentment we've talked of splitting up and calling it a day. Who hasn't? But every time our fundamental love for each other comes bubbling up and miraculously heals the wounds.

In a heated moment, Jenny may accuse me of a multitude of sins. I may accuse her of a multitude more. Is any of it true? Who knows? What matters is that sooner or later we can't help making up and then it's all just water under the bridge.

Above all, we've never found each other boring. We both have quirky, original minds forever going off in unexpected and fascinating directions. Every day we unfailingly amuse and delight and surprise each other.

An astonishing number of couples split up for no other reason than boredom - they've just got nothing to say to each other any more. That's one thing we're never in danger of.

So Happy Valentine's Day to all you lovely couples! And to everyone who's looking for love!