7: The moment of saying 'I love you' in My own struggles

Thursday 19th January 2017 - i felt relaxed with myself now that I no longer was on dating scene and had captured an absolute diamond girl. Weird thing is that i still didn’t have her phone number. We were still communicating through Tinder and the app was starting to go faulty. It would either forget to log me on. Then on other occasions when i was logged on, it would not show the messages from her. And i didn’t know her surname to track her down on Facebook etc in case Tinder would permanently go down before i could continue on speaking to her. As it turned out, she took note of phone number from the first date we had as she had difficulties with the Tinder app too. Once we started texting to each other’s number, we had both ditched Tinder for good.

Our first date as a couple would be on 28th January. I wanted to take her Wightwick Manor as i asked her the weekend before we became on item, but the weather wasn’t playing ball so i gave her the option of visiting the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham as a backup. I remember pulling outside Hednesford Library to pick her feeling actually nervous but excited at the same time. She walked over to my car about a minute later wearing a leather jacket, tight jeans and leather boots and as i gave her a wave when she walked over, i thought to myself “Wow, you got yourself a really gorgeous looking girl.” She was wearing a really nice fragrance too. As we drove away, we both settled on visiting the motorbike museum.

I remember a lot from that day. We got to museum roughly at 10.30am and walking around the whole museum took just under 3 hours. She made a lot of sarcastic remarks about a motorcycle company which had the same name as my first name how they weren’t very good endurance bikes. Something along the lines of ‘they try very hard but run out of steam eventually’! We saw her favorite bike which was a Triumph Bonneville and viewed the bikes that had entered the Isle of Man TT race. After viewing the museum, we went to the coffee shop in the museum to talk more about her. I say we meaning more her as i was still nervous/excited as i was before picking her up, that i was more listening to her talk about her work and also a falling out that she had on the other side with a mutual friend from work.

We still had a lot of time in the day to spend together so i rapidly decided that we should look around Resorts World being a minute drive from the museum. It was my first time there and i don’t think i’ll be heading back there any time soon. Not many shops (although i buy a crepe pan of all things!) and we both whizzed through the shopping center very quickly. I came up with a masterstroke and suggested that we go to eat the Sushi restaurant in Birmingham that she wanted to go. And so we went there and we got to know each other more. She was asking me questions and wanted to know more about how my last serious relationship broke down with Jade. I openly to her as honestly as i could but without feeling uncomfortable about it which was a great sign for me. I trusted her from the off.

After we finished our meal, I would drop her off but there was still time in the day to spend with her so i came back in with her. We would make out but it didn’t last long as her ex-boyfriend kept texting and calling her. I was getting nervous again but for different reason thinking that if Lauren still had feelings for her ex. She assured me she didn’t. I had to leave early just to get her to sort it out. I think it was the next day that she saw him stating that she had met me and that she didn’t want to see him again. Inside i kind of felt sorry for him as i had been in a similar position when Jade ended things with me. But i only cared for Lauren. On the Sunday night, we had our first phone call to each other and i think she felt better for that.

Mondays and Wednesdays became our thing for regularly seeing each other because of Yoga but it would be Friday 3rd February where things took another step up. I spent the whole weekend with her including staying overnight and yes it included us having sex with each other for the first time. We actually had sex 3 times in one night! By the 3rd time we had sex, i had nothing left to give! Sex with Lauren was 1 million times better than what i had with anybody else.

That weekend came as a sudden surprise because we did arrange to spend the weekend planned a week later from 10th-12th February. We did anyway as she wanted to use this weekend as a Valentine’s weekend including having a romantic dinner with each other in my home. Looking back on my time with Lauren, this was probably one of the most important and defining times i would have with her. In the run up to that weekend, i was busy preparing the house to be as tidy as it could be, i made a Salted Caramel cheesecake dessert (she would sort out dinner) and i also brought myself a new suit to wear for the evening. I got myself a waistcoat style suit and still actually have the suit on me. On the Friday before she arrived, i was again busy preparing for the evening with setting up the table, making sure the cheesecake was perfect, setting up Spotify in the background in case we had a romantic dance later on and writing her Valentine’s card which i wrote a lot of stuff in there. A lot of smoochy stuff but mainly wrote in there ‘I love you’.

Lauren came round after she finished work. She would start straight away with cooking dinner. It was her decision as she brought in the food anyway. She picked Beef Wellington with Potatoes and various vegetables. With some white wine on the side too. Once everything had settled down in terms of getting everything ready, i would be the first to get changed into my suit. I even wore my glasses too as she preferred the look of me wearing spectacles over contact lenses. She said ‘ooh you look nice’. I said thank you and offered to take over looking after the cooking to give her a chance to get ready. She came downstairs wearing a pretty blue dress. Yet again i thought ‘Oh my God!’ as she just totally stunning. We gave each other our cards. Inside my card, she wrote “Hope you will be mine for a while :P”.

Once we started eating, the rest of the evening couldn’t have gone any better. The conversation was free flowing as it had been before. Lauren did a good job with dinner and my cheesecake and turned out pretty well. There were 2 things really memorable from that night. Firstly, Lauren had quite a bit of wine which meant she was even more chatty than usual. She wasn’t drunk but i would say that she was tipsy. I was perfectly fine. She noticed that she talking a lot when she actually stopped herself and realized that i couldn’t get a word in! I told her that this was okay as i was genuinely listening to her. I always found her fascinating. The second memorable moment was when we done with dinner and actually popped back into the kitchen before heading up. We both had a passionate kiss and after a moments pause, it felt like the right to say to say the three magic words “I love you”. She said “I love you too”. We carried on kissing and then headed off the bedroom cuddling each other in bed.

I will never that night with Lauren. Everything came together at that moment and it was right. I would spend the next day at her as she gave me a baking 101 lecture. I loved her passion for things whether it’s to do with her job, her cats, baking or talking about her family she sparkled. I never found this passion from anybody else. She was one in a million.

As a short follow up to that weekend, i suggested that on Valentine’s Day itself we should do something unromantic and called our day Un-Valentine’s Day. So we drove to Burger King and had a drive through meal! The place was so quiet as i would imagine everybody else was eating at restaurants or just at home.

But Friday 10th February was the magic day that we declared our love for each other.