My gorgeous friend sighed with a twist of ecstasy when I asked how things were going with her boyfriend. At 8 months, her longest relationship. Suddenly the conversation flipped to me.

“That’s how I know it’s going to happen to you now! You know what the key is? You’ve got to NOT be looking for it? Remember that day we were at the races? I wasn’t expecting anything to happen that day and then I met him.”

I firmly replied with the line that I tell every person who insists it’s a matter of ‘not looking’.

“But I’m never looking for it, so that can’t be true.”

I’m never quite sure what the implication is when someone advices you to not-look. Does the act of looking actually repel love? What if it was subtle looking? Do you still give off that whiff of desperation which results to the love of your life going, “nope, not for me?” And by following their advice, and consciously choosing to not-look in the hope that one will fall in love – well doesn’t that mean you are kind of looking?

Or is it a matter of cosmic irony? Just as she least expected it …

In any case, what I said was true. I am almost always not-looking. Or should I say hardly ever looking. Perhaps, I will confess, there have been times my little heart has lifted with an inkling of hope. But at least 95% of my existence has been spent not-looking for love. And not once, in either the 95% of the time I’ve been not-looking, or that 5% that I possibly have, have I fallen in love.

And that day at the races? Falling in love, or even picking up was the last thing on my mind. Yet in the end she found her future boyfriend, and I chatted to a pretty damn cute guy who turned out to be gay. Go figure.

“It’s all luck,” I added.

Perhaps now you’re thinking the problem is that I am never looking. There’s another piece of advice: You’ve got to put yourself out there.

I like to think I’m pretty open and gregarious to everyone I meet, whether I’m attracted to them or not. The kind of person who is driven further into conversation when I recognise the potential for friendship, rather than a hook-up? Would I trade in this person for someone who is supreme at the art of seduction and has several notches – be they dates, hook-ups or boyfriends – on her belt?

Nope. And I’m trying not to make any value judgments as to which is the better kind of person to be. My point is that it’s OK to be me – someone who doesn’t have sex, who doesn’t date, and who has never been in love, just as it’s OK to be the kind of person who goes through the exciting but often emotionally draining dramas of dating. Or just as it’s OK to be a person in a loving relationship.

This is me. And not requiring improvement (at least in this area.)

It sounds terrible to define myself in the ‘absence of’ like that: “who doesn’t have ….” And yes, there is an element of feeling like you’re missing out on something. I wouldn’t mind having love, at some point. Yes I enjoy sex and kissing and touching. But if getting those things requires me to ‘play the field’ – which for me, being so unaccustomed comes out as disingenuous as ‘networking’, or attempt to trick the cosmic, ironic universe, then love, dating and all that jazz is not something I want.

And if that means a lifetime of not having it. So be it.

There are so many, many, many other things I would rather channel my energy into, before acquiring dating skills. The life I have now – single and sexless (well sex without someone else’s participation, ha!) – is it so bad? No, in fact it’s not only bearable, it’s awesome.

Occasionally I do become blue about being single. (I’d say, on average, for a couple of weeks every six months – still a very small minority of the time). And no doubt some of you reading this have been privy to the way I like to play up my perpetual singleness. The thing is, I want to stop all that. Because I think, when I do get bogged down like that, it’s better not to indulge. In fact it’s quite against my nature to mull over these elements in my life that I have sacrificed control of.

It’s much better, in fact, to say to me: hey, instead of fruitlessly wishing you could fall in love, why don’t you take all that pent-up sexual-romantic-frustration, and direct it to answering the question, how can you love the people already in your life, even more? Because trust me, those friends and family need it more than your completely abstract, non-existent problems.