Just when you thought...

...something happens to suggest you were wrong, right?

Now I'm usually one positive, "up and at 'em" kind of girl, but lately I've been wondering if my life really is a merry-go-round, full of incidents but recurring ones, the type that give you a feeling of deja-vu?

No point in sugaring the pill here, chaps; I'm talking relationships. Those of the man-woman variety, those that look very nice on the packet but you can never get them to look like that in real life...

Following my recent Berkshire-Lincolnshire shift (from the former to the latter) I met a local man who rather surprisingly, ticked all my boxes and a few more. I say surprisingly because I never thought meeting a man of business, of my age (ish), with experience of children and who had been out of a prior marriage (and over it) for some time would be easy here- I have to say it was well nigh impossible in Berkshire, and that was with a higher head count per square mile.

He (let's call him Duz....I initially called him Big after Big in Sex and the City- no imagination....Duz is short for Duzi, which is Polish for big- there, still no imagination) is all these things and more, has an air of assured confidence about him with a touch of gravitas and presence. Very nice, and all without asking for it- I felt like I had stumbled across 6 numbers on a Saturday night.

So, it's going swimmingly well, save for the fact that.......I cannot just let things happen in their own time. I seem to want everything now, I want his unequivocal declaration of his undying love for me signed in blood along with our place in the history books reserved as the happiest couple that ever lived. But not always....hereby hangs the issue:

• When we are together, I need no such assurance. I am just happy.
• I am also happy shortly after we've parted.
• A day or two later I'm looking for problems..."why has he not called....." etc, etc
• Anytime after that I've convinced myself he is a waste of time and I should do myself a favour and get out now.

Which is a problem only if he is not attentive. I really hate admitting all this because it makes me sound needy and clingy, two labels I have tried to avoid my whole life.

So, do I weather the storm and hope that I can hold my tongue long enough for him to see all he needs to see before making a firm offer to commit? Or do I bow out?? I'm reasonably sure that men and women are such different creatures that it would be futile to think that I'm going to find all I'm looking for in the shape of just one man, so maybe I just need to be the one who commits. The one who commits to trying to do things differently this time, to taking some time out, to slow the pace down a bit.

Just when you thought you were ready to stand down, you realise actually you need to step up, and up to the mark this time.