It’s been a bleak few years for me, love-wise.

Let me give you some context — I grew up in a pretty male (though probably not ‘masculine’) household, where my mum was outnumbered three-to-one by me, my brother and our dad.

None of us were stereotypical “men’s men,” but we weren’t particularly in touch with our feminine sides either.

I went to an all-boys secondary school when I was eleven and barely saw a girl for four years — though obviously, they were all I ever thought about.

Then, around the age of fifteen, turbocharged by MSN Messenger and those early house parties hosted by naively liberal parents, they became a dangerous new reality.

I could ace exams in my sleep, I played on the football team and fronted a band.

But girls?

Infinitely more complicated. Way more intimidating.

They had the power to destroy my confidence, my sense of self, and my ability to speak in full sentences.

They didn't even have to do anything — like interstellar objects, they would twist the fabric of spacetime just by existing nearby.

A glance, or worse, no glance — a smirk across a crowded room — it was enough to shatter me completely.

It still does in the right circumstances.

Somehow I ended up with my first serious girlfriend somewhere around then and embarked on the usual sequence of sexual misadventures.

I'll spare you the details.

I do remember being utterly, embarrassingly obsessed with her though.

She was comfortably the prettiest girl who’d ever shown any interest in me — which more than made up for the fact we had almost nothing in common.

My sincere belief in her absolute perfection only shattered when she turned up to the Christmas Ball in so much fake tan that she glowed in the dark and smelled like wood varnish.

After that, the spell was broken.

But the addiction remained.

I think my upbringing hardwired me to see women as some kind of higher, mysterious species — to be feared and worshipped in equal measure.

Neither, I’ve since learned, are particularly useful foundations for a relationship.

Still, I had a few real ones in my twenties. I even briefly considered moving to Ontario for a girl I met in the northeast of China.

But it all seemed to culminate in 2018, with what felt like the real thing.

We started as friends, then fell into one of those slow-burn workplace affairs. We were teaching English together; she was still in the dying embers of something else.

Life became full of glances, late-night messages, and dangerously charged silences. It was like playing the sexiest slot machine in the world.

I’d oscillate constantly between hope and heartbreak — completely besotted, despite the fact that, in the cold light of day, we probably didn’t have a huge amount in common.

(I’m beginning to sense a pattern here…)

Eventually we got it together. Things moved fast. We moved in. We got a dog.

And that’s when it all began to fall apart.

I started to panic.

It felt like the aperture of my life had suddenly narrowed to almost nothing.

My future seemed suddenly decided — like I’d built myself a dark tunnel I was now destined to spend the rest of my days walking through.

An engagement, a marriage, some kids, all whilst teaching English in various chaotic high schools.

Forever.

I started lashing out and doing strange things — like a graduate law degree.
(I lash out in oddly academic ways.)

Eventually I came to the realisation that I needed an ejector seat.

But breaking up with someone you love — even when that love is beginning to fade — isn’t like hitting a big red button and then floating serenely through the open air.

It’s more like emotional torture: a drawn-out spiral of circular arguments that ends with you coming home drunk one Tuesday night and watching someone’s heart break as you finally say all the terminal things you’ve been avoiding.

And then there’s the aftermath — the guilt, the mix of sadness and relief, the awkward mutual friends, the practical questions of who’s going where and when.

The long, slow process of sifting through the wreckage.

It took its toll.

I made a decision: that was it between me and love, for the foreseeable future.

I came to view love as something to be avoided at all costs, like some sort of seductive venus fly-trap that could suck you in and slowly dissolve you down into nothing.

And the next few years — not helped by a global pandemic — became a string of brief and meaningless encounters, a few sporadic dates, and a couple of adulterous affairs I’m now much more appropriately ashamed of.

I was pretty much game for anything, so long as it didn’t involve actual commitment.

Which brings us to Friday’s single — A Girl I Know.

That song is the story of one of those hedonistic episodes, told in three chapters, ending with an important question:

What if love could be all you needed?

Because in many ways, I think it probably is.

I’m not afraid to admit that my life feels a bit incomplete right now.

I think I’m pretty ready to confront some of those old demons and open myself up to someone.

The problem is finding her.

I’ve dated some great girls over the last year or two — and I’m sure they’re all breathing retrospective sighs of relief right now — but I haven't been able to find anything that feels... right.

I guess the truth is: the longer you spend building a life on your own terms, the harder it is to let someone else in.

We sort of ossify into inflexible versions of ourselves.

We have less patience and more to lose.

To answer my own question — I do think love could be all I need.

I’ve managed to fashion a pretty stable musical career on my own terms.

One that, with any luck, might take me somewhere interesting.

It’d be great to have someone to share that with.

But I'm not going to make the same mistakes again.

I'm looking for the one.

I'm going to give you a bit of an update on how that's going soon.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the song on Friday. I know a few of you have been looking forward to this one.

Keep dreaming,

Rob