I'm feeling disgruntled. I suspect this article will attract more attention than any of my super Kung Fu master feats of discipline.

Eurgh. Here we go.

In the old days (note the deliberate omission of ‘good’) when sexism and homophobia were in vogue, I’d have feared writing this article in anticipation of being called a ‘pussy’ or even ‘gay’ by my rugby mates.

Well, since vulnerability’s all the rage these days, I’m spilling the beans on the big news.

Swallowing one’s pride tends to be a tremendous precursor to growth. And there’s no one I’d hate to admit was right more than my mother.

"Oh Ben," she said to me once, "you do all this meditation, focusing so intently on all these things. You may think you're happy, but just you wait: the moment you fall in love, you’ll find real happiness."

I spat back at her. "Screw you, Mum. You have no idea. Love is an illusion. A Western marketing scam. I am above this mundane, worldly nonsense. Who needs love when you've got enlightenment?"

Well, this year I'm taking a big gulp.

The me of a year ago would balk at the following paragraph.

I, Ben Lucas, am living with and sharing a bed with a woman I am deeply in love with. I am in a long-term monogamous relationship of my own will and feel no commitment issues or urges to flee. Lele brings me joy every day. This feels extremely healthy.

Yes, it happened.

2025 was the year I became a softie. Snuggles ’n’ everything.

I tend to do things 100% or not at all. So, if I’m gonna do a relationship, I will trample on the competition to become the most in love person in the world. This article is my application for the prize.

The Fantasy

In last year’s year review, I wrote a poem. You might remember it. A portrait of my ideal partner.

I painted the picture of a kind of Kung Fu ice queen — Lucy Liu in Kill Bill kind of vibe.

This year proved excellent evidence that the law of attraction is a load of bollocks.

I find myself coming home to Lele, who energetically resembles a fairy bunny rabbit. She screams "Benben! Benben! You're back! I love you!”, jumps excitedly and runs over to hug me while wearing her fluffy bear costume.

Having interacted with this creature for eight months, I am confident that she is not a human. But not in the beyond emotion alien type I’d hoped for. Au contraire: It is her ability to relentlessly overflow with love for everyone that is beyond anything I thought possible.

Her enthusiasm for hugging and trading deep words of affection has not simmered down 0.1% in our eight months together. She cries tears of love every time we are together. Needs to keep tissues with her whenever we have a phone call.

I have a stubborn belief that I’m a cold, competitive, optimiser freak. Although in recent years people have called me nice or once even ‘sweet’, I find it difficult to believe I am worthy of loving, good people in my life. (Waa waa waa Mummy and Daddy always asked me why I had to be so competitive and couldn’t bebe nice like little brother George who all the other parents love.)

I’d never experienced true love. But this year the floodgates opened as 33 years of the stuff came pouring out. And I got into Taoist energy circulation practices to critically prevent the post-coital refractory period that depletes love and Qi (good news for my Gong Fu & meditation). Here’s not the space for details.

We have identical food tastes — boring and healthy. Identical bedtime tastes — ridiculously early. Left alone, I spend my whole day in practice / teaching / writing / Chinese learning robot monk mode.

Lele is my window into the world of love and softness. I love how clean she is. The hugs, the essential oil massages, the small things. I do have a feminine side.

Didn’t feel like I was missing something, but now I realise I was.

MY PATTERN

Previously, I thought I was a biological anomaly. That it would be totally impossible for me to fall in love.

It was a fun belief for my ego to play with. Helped me think I was different from muggles. That maybe if I were immune to love, I could be immune to the smorgasbord of human crap everyone else seems to go through.

Every previous relationship followed a familiar pattern of:

Some initial spark
They develop feelings, which I perceive as attachment
I back off. Freeze.
They pull harder
It does not end well

The pattern became so monotonous that I gave up. Essentially became celibate.

But the bloody karma remained unresolved and kept manifesting in new ways. My life became a seemingly never-ending sequence of entanglements with women I thought I was just friends with but they thought there was something more.

Coincidentally, this pattern reared its head in spectacular fashion on the eve of the day Lele and I went official. In a 48-hour intensive with a dear friend, all my ugly ego tricks which had been feeding this pattern surfaced. It was deeply confronting.

But I believe it cleared. Because since Lele and I became official, all this mischief has stopped. And critically, I haven’t subconsciously subjected Lele to the same dominant position I kept accidentally taking in other relationships and which led me to fear inflicting myself on the female sex.

(Dear Carmen and Levina, thank you so much for helping me in this period).

THE EXCEPTION

From the get go, I could feel something different in Lele. Something missing. It was subtle. Wasn’t love at first sight. Crept up on me.

My hypersensitive radar to neediness scanned her and found nothing. She frequently takes twelve hours to reply to my messages. This turns me on. I like it when I know they’re not thinking about me.

I felt safe. And this enabled me to open my heart.

Many accused me in the past of commitment phobia and avoidant attachment patterns. I was uncrackable. I never opened my heart to anyone.

I doubted myself. Maybe I was the problem.

I feel very smug now.

I wasn’t the problem. Every other girl was the problem.

(LOL winky face — just kidding. Because I’m all spiritual, I know the external world is a projection of my internal world, so all previous women I dated were projections of myself. No pointing the finger, Ben.)

Because I felt no attachment, with Lele I felt no fear. Opened my heart completely. Taking her to England to meet the fam and moving in together after less than seven months elicited not one iota of the ‘This is going too fast?!’ response.

Her love is pure.

Untangling Guilt

A couple of years back I nearly shaved my head.

Got close to some monks who do Asubha practices — visualising hot babes turning into old repulsive hags, remembering they are actually filthy bags of pus and shit. Practices to make them find sex repulsive.

I never went there, but grew to believe I ought transcend and not enjoy love and sex.

Had a funny encounter in April. I always viewed my first master as a celibate monk-like figure. He was my role model. Seemed above it.

I met up with him in China after a couple of years apart. I’d brought Lele along and left her to speak with Shifu’s friend while we talked.

I asked him about this. About whether I was betraying my path. About whether I should distrust all this beauty I was experiencing. He once told me relationships were a trap. Those words stuck in my mind. I brought this up.

He said: “No. Those words were meant for you at that time in your life. You are beyond this now.”

What really clinched it was that I discovered the friend he brought wasn’t his friend but his girlfriend. We were on a double date.

My super Buddha role model was in a relationship. Maybe sounds petty, but that did a lot for me in making peace with this big transition into the first real relationship of my life.

I dropped the guilt.

Nothing wrong with a bloody good shag. Especially when it’s tantric. Which doesn’t mean, as I discovered, anything overly weird. I like Osho’s definition: Tantra is the transformation of sex into love by awareness.

Beliefs Shattered

This year shattered so many of my deepest-held beliefs:

Falling in love. I thought I was biologically incapable of love. Totally wrong.
Being loving. I am not a cold robot who makes people feel bad. We exchange 'I love you' around fifty times per day. I know I make her feel good.
Sharing a bed. Always said my greatest fear was sharing a bed. Now I look forward to it. I've got a nice cuddly little animal next to me.
Willingly monogamous. Always thought I'd rebel against the shackles of monogamy. Now I willingly want to preserve the purity of our connection. I’m committed. My fear of settling has simmered down.
Taoist energy circulation practices. When you learn Taoist magic tricks, sex needn’t deplete but can build energy and love. This has been mammoth.
Sitting with emotions. Thought I could never understand the woman or overcome my masculine impulse to fix their emotions. But I’ve done this well and discovered Lele is actually very simple. She just needs love and I only need treat her as I would an adorable pet. Periods remain challenging – but hey, gotta have something to work on in 2k26.
Drama. I thought relationships necessarily denoted constant drama. But, while we've worked through challenges, there have been almost no instances of resentment or finger-pointing. My life has actually become simpler.

Love Robot

I never thought there could be someone who could tolerate all my idiosyncrasies.

She calls me her 'Love Robot' and understands that, just as she needs love in times of difficulty, I need to charge my batteries — which means being a robot monk at regular intervals.

While I’ve softened up, I still haven’t developed the capacity for things like jealousy, attachment, an understanding of why marriage or babies would be a good idea, or the impulse to buy or receive gifts to display love. She accepts this all.

Also, this relationship has done something interesting to me self-perception.

I tend to give off weird vibes.

Lele is by conventional standards a catch. A yoga and essential oils teacher with over a million followers. Beautiful and likeable.

I imagine that when people see us together, they might think, ‘Hmmm... This guy's kinda weird. But his girlfriend is lovely, so maybe he's not too much of a freak.'

And I’ve noticed that rather than deflating people’s perception of me, the fact that I’m able to hold down a loving relationship has inspired – especially those I coach.

A Rambling Yet Amusing Detour

I'm hoping — as I have often hoped with everything I've ever enjoyed — that maybe the Buddha was wrong. Maybe this is different. Maybe this magical feeling will last forever and won’t suffer the same fate of everything I've ever got excited about.

But after eight months of relentless love, I’m convinced that this love is immune to the law of impermanence.

Where is the fun of life if we don’t latch onto hope that we can grasp lasting satisfaction from life? The Buddha in my ear whispers that that very hope carries the seed of the disappointment that follows. That the laws of yin and yang will balance out all this positivity.

But in fact, there is a loophole to this game. As a qualified lawyer, I’m a pro at spotting these.

Yes, let’s end this on a moral note. Enough tomfoolery for today.

CONCLUSION

When love is stripped of attachment and leaped into fearlessly, it can transcend patterns of suffering and be as spiritually enriching as the highest meditation.

You don't transcend love by avoiding it. You transcend attachment by loving fully without grasping.

So yeah, Mum, you were right. Perhaps you and Dad have a glimmer of hope that your son is turning normal.

2025: love