23 Attempts at Love

Chapter 16: A Different Kind of Love

After Ed was officially fired I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't date anyone from work, but since I spent most of my week there and my weekends with my adorable, goof and loving flatmates who I absolutely never wanted to see naked, I turned back to an old friend: Tinder. This time the last picture on my profile featured me standing next to an elephant in South Africa. The bio read: "Swipe for a picture of me and your Mum."

London online dating was unlike anywhere else, and I soon matched with Richard: he was tall, charming and had an adorable dog. He was a little older: at this point I was 23 and he was 30, the biggest age gap of my dating history so far. He worked as a security consultant for a large technology firm. He'd wanted to work in the marines but the allure of a London salary trapped him here.

After a day or so of messages we agreed to meet up in a bar in Brixton, not too far from my flat in Clapham but much further for him to travel to from his place in Tooting. We met outside the bar on a dark street in the winter cold.

"You're smaller than I thought you'd be," he said, wrapping my shivering body into a welcoming hug.

Two hours later we were still sat in the same bar with no intentions of leaving any time soon: he was charming, interesting, intelligent and equal parts mysterious. He described his work as security consultancy for a technology firm, but said very little about anything else beyond that, except for mentioning that he often travelled away for work and worked on stuff he couldn't really talk about. Obviously I was fascinated, and I'm sure he knew it.

Everything moved very quickly after that: we arranged another day for the end of that same week, and shortly after that I travelled to his flat to meet his dog properly: Alfie the bulldog, who liked nothing more than belly rubs and producing enough saliva to fill a water park. Richard had spent the last 10 years' of his life in a relationship with a girl he met at uni, but they had finally broken up after accepting they just weren't in love, and he'd been left alone in the flat they'd shared together with Alfie.

Richard and Alfie were soon invited over for a Sunday roast with my flatmates one weekend, along with Marcus's latest girlfriend and Will's long-term girlfriend, who practically lived with us at this point. After that, Richard started joining for weekly Friday drinks at our local pub and soon we were spending three, sometimes four nights a week together.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before he had to meet the parents.

"You have to bring him home for us to meet, darling!" Mum squealed down the phone. She'd been kept updated throughout the entire relationship and they'd already met him on video call, but now she was proposing a weekend back home in Nottinghamshire with Richard, Alfie and I for them to meet my latest boyfriend.

Again, I wanted them to meet him: I wanted their approval because it was important to me that I was making the right choices. Richard was older and incredibly smart and charming and everything suddenly seemed so serious. Only three months in I was convinced that I loved him and that we would probably be together forever.

Mum and Dad loved him: he drove us back to my family home in his Mini Cooper, with Alfie on the back seats slobbering over both our arms and every other surface he could find.

"I think you've chosen a good one," Dad smiled wryly over dinner while Richard was outside with Alfie. Mum nodded in agreement: she liked Richard but she especially liked Alfie, who had spent most of the afternoon sitting on her lap snoring by the fireplace.

There was one issue: we hadn't had the conversation about whether we were officially together or what exactly this whole relationship was, although I was convinced he wasn't dating anyone else. He's explained early into our dating history that he had trouble settling down: he hated putting labels on things and generally didn't want to have conversations around the topic. He always felt pressured to make decisions, he said. He didn't want that for us, he said.