I’m a man in love.  Yeah, yeah.  Guys, get your sniggering over and done with.  Girls, get that cynical, you’re-only-saying-that-to-get-some-action look off your face.  It’s true.  I’m in love, and love changes you.

Oh, she doesn’t mean that to happen.  Not consciously, anyway.  But you find someone that is such a close match to your ideal, and then your jaw drops because, unbelievably, she thinks you’re close to her ideal.  Close, but not exact.  So as you rub up against each other (hey!  Get your mind out of the gutter.  I’m being metaphysical here), the lumps get smoothed, so in the end you’re a perfect fit.  But the process knocks a couple of lumps off both of you.

You know what it’s like.  She makes the effort to understand the offside rule, you make the effort not to laugh all the way though the chick-flick she likes.  Then it gets into a feedback loop.  You take her to a game, because she seems so interested in football.  She takes you to some dire, subtitled art-house film because you really seemed fascinated by the last chick-flick.  And before you know it, she’s screaming obscenities at the ref, and you’re using words like ‘metaphysical.’

Not that I mind.  No, no, no.  Quite the opposite.  She is a gorgeous girl, and I love her.  I mean, all the meeting-of-minds, holding-hands, spend-the-rest-of-our-lives-together in love.  I’d rather spend an evening with her than a stag weekend with the lads.  I don’t regret that at all, I embrace it.  It’s great.

But it’s not always easy, especially if you’re a creature of habit like me.  Some things I want to change, because I want it all to be so perfect.  Sometimes it’s fairly easy.  Sometimes, it’s near impossible.

Chatting up other women: easy.  I’m nice to other women, sure, and I’m not castrated.  I can appreciate a nice pair of legs or a pretty face, just the same as I always could.  But would I risk throwing away what I have for a quicky in the pub carpark?  Do me a favour!  Seriously, some crumpet could walk up to me naked and beg me, and it wouldn’t be a struggle to say no.  I’m not looking for a medal for that, it’s just the way you feel when you’re in love, right?  Like I say, it changes you.

But some other stuff, it’s not easy.  When I tell you, you’ll understand.  The thing is, she’s a vegetarian.  Hey, no, wait.  Don’t judge her.  She’s not one of those starey-eyed, evangelical, political types.  Neither is she one of those women who stopped maturing at twelve and feels sorry for the little lamby-wambies.  She feels that it’s immoral to keep animals for the sole purpose of food, that’s all.  That’s the way she feels, and power to her elbow.  She doesn’t mind other people eating meat, and she’d never try to change me.

Except ...

Except, I notice the way she looks when we eat out.  She tries not to show it, but I can tell; the way she avoids looking at me when I put a chunk of beef into my mouth; the way she avoids looking at the pink juice from my rare steak.  And it hurts me a little bit.  Not much, just an insect bite to my soul, but I know that I’m being just a little less than perfect.

And it’s not all one-sided.  When we first made love she would make this weird, little snorting noise just before ... anyway, she tries not to anymore.  I never said anything, but she picked up on it, the way I picked up on her veggie thing.

So, I’ve tried doing the vegetarian thing.  At first, it was just when we ate together.  I’d order a vegetarian course, because it’s no big deal, right?  But then, when things started to get serious between us, we hardly spent any time alone.  And that’s when the whole vegetarian thing came to a head.

You love somebody, right?  You want them to love you, and they do, okay?  But you just can’t quite believe it.  Why would they choose a loser like you, yes?  You’ve got all these reasons why they shouldn’t love you, but you’re frightened to share them because then they’ll know what a complete and utter tosser you really are, and there’s your future happiness gone right up the swannee.

Then it all gets serious, you’re both talking about plans for next week, next month, next year.  And suddenly, you’re just assuming you’re going to be together forever.  So now, you have to tell her the things about yourself she needs to know, and you pray, pray like your life depends on it, that she’ll still love you afterwards.  Because your life does depend on it, in a way.

I have a problem.  It’s not like I’m a serial killer or I smoke or anything.  It’s medical.  Once a month I have ... issues.  Think of it like the world’s worse PMS.  I turn into a right animal.  Well, I turn into a wolf, to be exact.  I’m lunar intolerant.  It’s no big deal, usually.  Come the full moon and I stay away from people.  That’s why I commute in from the countryside.  The worst that happens is that sometimes I’ll wake up with chicken feathers in my mouth or I’ve dug up the flower bed.  But women can be funny about those sorts of things.

So I sat her down, topped up her Chianti, and told her.  It’s not easy.  I mean, how do you tell someone something like that.  “Hey, Darling, you know I keep sniffing your bottom?”

Afterwards, after I convinced her it wasn’t a joke, she just sat there for a moment or two.  You know they say a drowning man sees his life flash past his eyes?  I saw my entire future flash past mine.  All the might-have-beens, going right down the plug-hole.  Then she grabbed me and hung onto my neck for the longest time.  When she pulled back, her face was wet with tears, and I cursed myself for making her cry, for ruining everything, for having the arrogance to think she could want me.

But she did.  Still, even knowing that about me.  We sat for hours, discussing what we could do, how we could cope.  I swore that night, high on wine and love, that I would never touch a piece of meat again, and I meant every word of it.  And afterwards, when we went to bed ... Hell, that’s none of your business.  Anyway, the upshot was, we loved each other more than ever we had before, and I knew, knew with every atom of my being, that we would live happily ever after.

We became a couple.  Friends would invite us out together.  That’s when you start to become an item, when friends know you as ‘Bob-and-Sue,’ like you’ve only got one name between you.  But you’re not really a couple until you meet her parents, though in her case it was just her widowed mum.

Things were going well.  Her mum didn’t think I was good enough for her little girl, naturally, but she could see we were happy together.  The evening was going well enough, so well we sort of lost track of time, though that might have been down in part to the wine.  I think her mum was as nervous as we were, so when the second bottle was empty, Sue volunteered to nip along the road and get another bottle.  I was going to go with her, it getting twilight outside, but she laughed it off.  She was safe in Cheam, it’s not like it was West Beirut.  Anyway, I could have a nice cosy chat with Mum, all by ourselves.

By the time she came back, it was too late.  We hadn’t had dinner, I’d had a little too much wine, and it was a full moon.  She found me in the living room, changed, tucking into what was left of her mother.

And she left me, just like that.  No discussion, no second chances.  It was ‘bad boy’ and out the door.  How unreasonable is that?

I mean, it was the first meat I had eaten in six months.  Everyone cheats at least once on a diet, don’t they?