How To Find True Love

They say that three times married, which I am, is a triumph of optimism over experience. I call it having an open mind to wonderful possibilities and not being a hostage to the past. It wasn't always that way.

After my second acrimonious divorce, I did what all divorced people do; I went out in search of new love. Needless to say, I didn't find it. I went to bars and nightclubs, and I went to singles clubs. All I ever met at night clubs was players. I was quite surprised to discover that my biggest competition was not other single men, but men who were married. Even more galling was that it was the married men who the most successful in getting a girl. And without wishing to sound cruel or unfeeling, all I ever saw at singles clubs was a room full of pain and misery. It seemed everybody was hurting and felt all bitter and twisted. Not a great environment for starting over. In the end, I gave up looking and instead just concentrated on doing the things I enjoyed doing.

Another thing I discovered during my years of trying to get a girl was that when nobody wants you, nobody wants you. As an envious race of humans, we always want what somebody else has got. A female friend of mine educated me on this matter explaining that a single man like me, all alone in a bar, gave off the impression that he had nothing to offer. On the other hand, a man with a pretty blond clearly has something worthwhile making a play for.

I took up sailing and surfing. I learned a new language, and I opened my own piano bar and my own language academy. I also moved house twice. That kept me more than busy. But something was missing, somebody to love and to be loved by.

Unlike many men, I can cook and clean, but what was missing in my life was the female touch. Holding me back was negative feelings about my past relationships: not too surprising since they both ruined me economically.

I have to confess that a large part of me became misogynistic. I didn't hate women, but I certainly harbored some pretty negative feelings, and with some degree of reason. Reason enough to give up on the idea of ever living with somebody else. I accepted my lot as a single man for the rest of my life, and I was quite happy to do that.

One day I went to a bar across the street for breakfast, and the owner introduced me to a foreign woman who asked me to walk her into town. Of course, I was happy to accompany a pretty girl down the street. I didn't realise that that street led not just into town, but in fact, led to a whole new life.

The woman blew me away with her kindness, her friendliness, and her humour. We got on fantastically well and started dating, and before I knew it, I was head over heels in love with her. And that, as they say, was how it all began.

Six years later and I am a deliriously, happy married man. I never fully realised how unhappy I was for ten whole years until the woman who is now my wife totally transformed my life.

I now accept that ten years was healing time, time that I needed to get over the previous two negative experiences.

My advice to anybody looking for love is that you will never find it, so stop looking. Don't worry, when the time is right, it will come looking and find you. You just have to let go of the past and be open to new possibilities.