The dilemma Four years ago, I made a new friend. We quickly became close and did everything together. Friends would observe that we acted like a couple and often asked when we would cop on and get together, but while my friend is very attractive, and I care about them more than anyone outside my family, I didn’t feel love or sexual chemistry.

Last year we slept together a couple of times while quite intoxicated. It didn’t feel right to me and I regretted it. My friend wanted more, although we never talked about it clearly in those terms. Things broke down and we aren’t talking now. I’m dating someone I care about deeply, but I’m not in love. I don’t have trouble attracting wonderful people, but eventually this is how all my relationships go… I feel I’m not in love and we part.

I used to think that when I found the right person it would happen. But I’m in my late 30s and nothing has changed. It’s becoming clear to me the reason I haven’t fallen in love is me, not everyone else. I’ve started to wonder if I’ve misjudged my relationship with my best friend and missed my chance for love. But more importantly, I wonder if there’s any way to save our friendship.

Mariella replies In your admirable bout of self-interrogation, you have stumbled on one of the tough truths about relationships: most of them are defined by patterns of behaviour and choices we are not even conscious of making. Let’s start with your estranged friend and, briefly, lover. Solving that bit of the puzzle will be a good warm-up for our further probing.

One of the most valued elements of any friendship has to be communication, the pleasure derived from being with someone who intuitively understands us and enjoys our company. Sex muddies the water and causes people to behave in all manner of dysfunctional ways, but when it comes to a pal, not talking is really not an option.

You stopped communicating precisely because you failed to unravel the emotional tangle your physical activities created. Guessing what your friend was thinking is not the path to mutual understanding, so I’d make a start by apologising for not doing the right thing when things got complicated.

Drunkenness might lead us into our more ill-considered acts, but it’s rarely to blame entirely. Taking personal responsibility for your actions, inebriated or not, is a sensible first step. A substance-fuelled foggy one-night stand is one thing – sex on more than one occasion with someone you are close to is an entirely different scenario. A meet-up where you both air your feelings, rather than presume what the other thinks, would be a mature way to resolve your current estrangement. After that, whether to pursue something beyond the platonic will be up to you both but, at the very least, you’ll have rekindled a friendship.

How to find love, or recognise it when it’s in front of you, is another matter and not so easily solvable, though once you’re clearer on your instinctive responses it’s much easier to modify your actions to help you.

Most of the time we get what we’re looking for, whether we know it (or indeed like it) or not. Understanding that love isn’t an inescapable lightning bolt is a truth we do well to grasp. Love is hard to define, difficult to sustain and an incredibly precious connection between two people, whether it’s fuelled by passion or perseverance. Like happiness, the other elusive emotion we doggedly pursue, it’s transitory, challenging to recreate and the highs are as hard to achieve as the lows are to avoid. It’s a dereliction of duty and pure fiction to pretend it is down to fate.

Defining what it is that leaves you dissatisfied with other people will help you understand why you are unable to commit. That eureka moment you lust after will come and you’ll run into a person who provokes what you currently think of as “love”. I’d put money on it being someone who triggers your insecurities and therefore breaks through your defences.

Is that worth waiting for? What you have now – “caring deeply” for your current partner and, possibly, what you had before with your estranged friend – are certainly forms of love, just not laced with the addictive quality we so often crave. It’s fascinating how delusional and inventive the human psyche can be, endlessly coming up with compelling reasons to keep us enslaved to the same dysfunctional dynamic.

If, for instance, we keep putting on weight it’s generally considered something we are responsible for, that it results from personal choices, such as bad diet or lack of exercise. Yet when we repeat patterns in relationships we’re deemed to be in the vice-like grip of emotions we can’t control. It’s a myth, and one that leads us to dead ends. My guess is you’ve been dodging commitment for a long time. You must decide whether that’s your narrative – or whether you’ve got the wherewithal to change the ending.

If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. Follow her on Twitter @mariellaf1

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