If I had a dollar for every time over the past few weeks someone has said to me: Well, now that you have given up you will meet someone, I would have about 10 bucks. That’s enough to buy sushi – which I have been eating so much of lately I may well end up with mercury poisoning.

The reason for these well-meaning (but ultimately misguided) musings from my friends, and even relative strangers, is that since my affirmation of nearly a month ago that I was done with dating, I was done with looking, I was done with the whole damn thing, I have never been happier. What a marvellous revelation that has been.

I have come to realise that over the years I have spent far too much time over-analysing why I don’t love someone who society says I should, or why they don’t love when, well, I think they should. I have written about so many of my failed relationships (some under the auspices of my first fiction novel) and dissected every last aspect of what was right and what was wrong ( which I sometimes ignored for years), which let’s face it is a huge waste of energy, as well as ink for that matter.

Now here I am and I can truly say I am happy with my lot. I love my life, I have a great circle of friends, my staff are nice to me most of the time, and I have even started doing exercise – indeed endorphins are my new best friend. When I explain all of these wondrous attributes to anyone who will listen, their first response is as noted in the first line of today’s blog. To this, I protest much. You don’t understand, I say. I really am not interested and it’s not because I hate men. I love them – maybe once or twice too often in the past. I just don’t want to be reliant on anyone else for my happiness. Not that I think I have been, but on past reflection many of my relationships were a raging torrent of ups and downs and to tell the truth I’ve just had jack of it.

Since my realisation that I am actually a very happy hippie, I have witnessed several relationships break down – some old, some new –  and have handed out far too many tissues to far too many fabulous women. If there are any blokes out there who want to cry on my shoulder, just let me know, because I am getting rather good at it.

One of my friends has a philosophy that he calls the “grief principle”. He reckons that everyone has a certain amount of grief, or stress, they have to deal with on a daily basis. So he has always approached relationships with a keen eye on whether the new person in his life adds or subtracts from the amount of grief he already had before he met them. If they add more grief, it’s bye-bye, if they reduce the grief, well, there might be something good happening here. I like this principle. Obviously in long-term relationships there will be more ups and downs, but in the beginning, shit, it should be smooth sailing, coupled with lots and lots of sex, for the first few months or even years at least.

Maybe I’m aiming too high, but my father always told me there was never any point aiming for the middle. Also, when I am this happy with the ways things are, why would I settle for anything that makes me less happy than I am by myself? The only thing that worries me is that life is so good at the moment that I’ll probably get hit by a bus tomorrow. Bloody typical.