You've got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.
This is the story of one woman who was dating 100 men in an effort to find Mr Right but then she found him

I’ve been with Man number 11 for eight months now and we have our ups and downs like anyone else and he can be extraordinarily grumpy and we have ‘issues’ that we constantly work on – but I’m totally in love. My eyes have transformed into filtered camera lenses when I look at him and a normal guy becomes Cary Grant or George Clooney. I know this is good old oxytocin and that I’m deluded but I don’t want it to be any other way. I love him in the old fashioned way that I thought was fantasy or just something that people made up for films and stories and songs.

The problem is that wherever I turn there is negativity about this and apparently, according to self-help books and general advice, I’m a ‘disappearing woman’ because my relationship is the most important thing in my life and I want to be with him when I can.

One of my friends last night said: “When I met you, you were an independent woman and I thought if you found a relationship, you’d have it as a sort of ‘bolt-on’ to the rest of your life but what’s happened is that you have the rest of your life as a bolt-on to your relationship.”

I found myself agreeing and almost apologising and putting myself down a bit because it’s not the first time it’s been pointed out and everywhere I look I’m being ‘told’ that what I feel is wrong.

I have two or sometimes three precious nights with him at weekends because he works away most weeks, apart from occasionally when I might see him for one night in the week. And I do shift things about to make time for him, simply because when he’s there it’s the most exciting thing – like I felt on Christmas night when I was 10 years old – and anyone else in my position would do EXACTLY the same.

I’ve been really worried about this and stressed and thinking I have to stop feeling this way and stop making him so important and build up the rest of my life. I’ve really been upset and making an effort to pull away from him. Then this morning it struck me that my life is ok – better than ok. In all other areas, I am exactly where I should be and where I would have been if I hadn’t met him.

I was listening to the radio when I realised. Every song they played had lyrics about love and how overwhelming it is. And I thought: “Hang on a minute…! Why am I letting myself get stressed out by something that is totally natural but which it has become fashionable to slate and rebel against?”

Well, I have to tell you, everything else DOES mean less than he does but that doesn’t mean that my feelings about the rest of my life have changed and that all of it has suddenly shrunk in comparison, it means that I just found something much bigger than the rest of my life!

All I feel is the same feeling that all the songs and stories and films are about. The same feeling that the poets wrote about and you and the ‘experts’ can boil it down to biology and hormonal trickery as much as you like in your big cauldron of cynical pop psychology and so-called science but get the feeling yourself and you will also want to drown in it.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.

Love IS massive and it does explode into your life and change things – it changes you! There’s nothing wrong with the way that I feel and when I think sensibly about it and look at my life I can see that it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to me and I really don’t want to change it.