Tonight I’m out with the delectable fellow that shall be referred to as The Young Swede. He’s everything you could want in a man: intelligent, good looking and sensitive, with a smart-arse sense of humour. Kissing him is as celestial as being surrounded by a host of cherubim and seraphim.

We share so many likes and dislikes that you couldn’t make it up: we snark sarcastically at the same things, but we also share a love of traditions and travelling, home-made food and foreign languages, cycling, hiking and an unquenchable desire to challenge the status quo. So, gentle reader, you might be asking yourself how this bundle of delectable manhood qualifies as Unsuitable Man #3.

Well, it’s an irremediable flaw that makes a mockery of all his fine qualities and cocks a snook at Cupid’s misguided intentions: the Young Swede is ten years my junior.

Now, this may not be wildly important in the Grand Scheme of Things, and to be honest I quite like the idea of being labelled a ‘cougar’, but if we’re thinking in terms of childbearing (and I suspect that one of us is thinking about it rather more than the other), it’s a dead duck.

And herein the rub. Do you sacrifice a whole heap of fun, just because the template isn’t right, or do you keep on having a ball, only to wake up one day to find that your ovaries have withered and your mother’s sobbing into her hanky because she’s never going to be a grandma?

As it turns out, in this particular case, the decision is made for me: the Young Swede has decided that I’m past my sell-by date and has rather unceremoniously – but of course, quite charmingly – dumped me. Of course, he’s far too fabulous for us not to remain friends, but guess what? I’m still bloody single.