Judge Rinder has found love, but it's sadly "unrequited".
Judge Rinder
The 41-year-old TV judge - whose real name is Robert Rinder - has admitted that he and "romantic love" are "not destined to get along" after he met someone he developed a crush on, before quickly realising it was one sided and having his heart broken by the mystery man.
Writing in his column for the Evening Standard newspaper, he said: "Romantic love and I are not destined to get along. When I tell people this they seem to get terribly upset, I feel them setting up imaginary Justgiving pages. But I don't want anybody doing a fun run for me. I don't need a quack telling me why I'm bad at finding men, either. It's obvious. I have no small talk, I'm insecure and the person who props up my mental health most is my cleaner, Petya. Throw in emotional risk-aversion and the sums don't add up to happiness. So I decided to surrender to singledom.
"Then, as if on cue, this year I met the most beautiful man who unleashed in me a torrent of all of the lust and madness I hadn't felt since I was 21. After a reasonable number of texts I decided, while Christmas shopping, to just go for it and send the 'look, I love you' text. The breathtaking winding agony of rejection still, it turns out, hits hard."
But Rinder insists that whilst he wasn't upset that the man had turned him down, he did feel disappointed in himself for allowing himself to be "vulnerable".
He added: "I wasn't hurt because he turned me down (kindly, with a "no thanks") but rather because I'd allowed myself to be vulnerable and because meeting someone has been seemingly impossible. I may be a passionate matchmaker, however my friends are diabolical at it. All their efforts are tinged with that notion that your two gay friends must be perfect for each other."
The star isn't letting his failed search for love get him down though, as he is looking on the bright side - including the fact he's made an "extremely good-looking and nice new friend" from the situation.
He wrote: "I could feel dejected by all of this but I don't. I am taking solace in the fact that I was capable of feeling that all-consuming lust again. Yes, the horror of having my advances rebuffed may have been painful but the discovery that there are still ravishing and delectable men out there worth risking your heart to meet is consolation in itself.
"And so, this Christmas, I am delighted that I managed to rediscover those deranged, passionate feelings within myself. This kind of experience, even if it's fleeting, can briefly mask the chasm between the story we tell ourselves about life, and life as it actually presents itself to us. Added to all of this, I have acquired an extremely good-looking and nice new friend out of it. And that is a lovely way to end the decade."
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