The first time he sat next to me in my living room, I spent the night fighting the urge to do something about it.

That night, we were just friends watching a movie. Acquaintances that had met through a whole series of cool coincidences and decisions, and then started talking. Then we met again and again and the conversation always continued long into the night.

Then one unexpected day it shifted from cafes to my couch and our discussions about life, love and the universe carried on unabated with, perhaps, an added dimension of delicious chemistry.

And then we both got honest and said what had been lurking beneath the friendly facade for weeks. And then we both agreed not to do anything about it.

For a bunch of reasons, we decided to maintain and grow our friendship before disrobing under the bed covers together. This is a new turn of events – for me anyway.

Everyone is astonished at how calm I am with such temptation regularly lingering before me but without the opportunity to do anything about it to satisfy my lust and my fervent curiosity. But surely, I think, this is the way that most (normal) people begin successful love affairs? You know, based around mutual interests, morals and respect, not just too many beers at the pub and lust in our hearts, minds and nether regions.

So there will be no sex, not for quite some time – maybe never. Even though our chats regularly last until the wee small hours, it seems there is still so much more that needs to be said.

It took me many years to get to the point where I am very happy with my life without the aid of some inappropriate dude lying next to me to make me feel whole – temporarily anyway. And I recognise that giving my heart away too easily has cost me dearly over the years. I am loath to do it again. But I doubt I ever will. I am much closer with my invisible friend, Will Power, than I used to be, you see.

But, this very satisfactory life I have created, filled with lots of social activities and nice things to occupy my time, is not the panacea to a happy soul. I recognise that while I can be pretty bloody smug with my lot, there is one singular thing missing. And that is love.

Yet standing on the precipice of something potentially cool, and something potentially that could possibly become something awesome, scares the bejesus out of me.

My brother told me yesterday that I am very good at talking myself out of doing things – especially if it is matters of the heart. I said it was for self-preservation reasons. He seemed nonplussed with my answer. Maybe he has a point. Bastard.

I just remembered that this week, in my real life job, I wrote: Feel the fear… and do it anyway. I wasn’t writing about love but methinks it’s time to heed my own advice. So I wait. And hopefully I can finally be patient enough to just see what happens – and then continue to be happy regardless of the outcome.