Having hauled my suitcase and laptop bag up four flights of stairs, I kicked off my shoes and slumped on to the sofa in the living room of my North London flat.
It was 2008 and I had just returned from a reporting trip to Asia with then prime minister Gordon Brown. I had worked through the night and hadn’t slept at all on the plane. I was exhausted.
My colleagues, mostly men, had been keen to get back to their families. But in my empty one-bedroom flat, the silence was deafening. I was 37. How on earth had I ended up here?
Feminists might howl – but former high-flyer KATHERINE BALDWIN (pictured with her fiance, Bill) says that the only way for her to find love was to surrender everything she once fought for
I had a job title — political correspondent for Reuters — that made strangers say: ‘Wow!’ I had a busy social life and all the independence I’d ever longed for. I raced around the City on a natty little pistachio-green Vespa. I’d achieved so much, yet I felt painfully alone and hollow inside. What had all the striving been for?
Surely I’d done as I was expected to by my parents and teachers. I’d studied hard, graduated from Oxford University, travelled the world and landed a string of good jobs, first at Bloomberg and then Reuters.
I thought a relationship and family — the last pieces in the puzzle — would simply slot into place. But that had not happened.
I was based in Parliament, working all hours and coping with the stress by bingeing on sugar. I ran miles to burn off the excess calories. I was always on the move.
Many of my female friends were in the same boat — single, with stellar careers and hectic lives, but living alone.
‘We were building our careers, so we had to work at evenings and weekends,’ recalls Jess, a barrister friend I met at Oxford when we were driven young women, conscious of coming from families without much money, determined to carve out a place for ourselves.
We stayed friends throughout our busy 20s and 30s, snatching drinks in wine bars and, increasingly, asking ourselves why we couldn’t find the right guy. Our friends, like us, were working flat out and missing the weddings, parties and family events that tend to lead to introductions to eligible partners.
Life changer: Katherine reporting from Afghanistan
For a long time, the thought of settling down never occurred to us. We had promotions to chase, new countries to see and precious little spare time.
But by our mid-30s, things had subtly changed. We didn’t need a man to complete us, but we had created wonderful lives and wanted to share them.
Although Jess is now married — and I am godmother to her wonderful five-year-old daughter, Zoe, born when she was 41 — back then, we wondered whether either of us would ever find someone.
The men we met in smoky Covent Garden bars, stuffed full of over-confident bankers and lawyers, were inevitably unavailable — attached to someone else, wedded to their work or unwilling to commit.
I’d set my sights on a university graduate who was driven, ambitious and ‘A’-type, with an exciting job and a salary to match. But the ones I fell for were unbearably arrogant, too busy or after someone younger.
I remember falling for an Irish guy, Phil, when I was about 36. I flew to Ireland to visit him, hoping he would love me back. But he preferred to stay up all night drinking with his friends than hang out with me.
I consoled myself with the lyrics of Michael Bublé’s song Haven’t Met You Yet and got back to work.
Of course, there were nice, normal guys around, too — lurking shyly among the noisy groups of finance workers and other high earners. One in particular, Michael, fell for me when I was 37 and wanted to commit. We’d met at a party and dated for a couple of months — meeting at weekends, because he lived outside London.
Katherine at the border of Brazil and Argentina in 2002, aged 31
Then, one morning, my feelings flipped like a switch. I suddenly loathed the way he crunched his cornflakes, while the grey hairs in his stubble freaked me out.
With my heart set on my alpha male, I simply couldn’t bring myself to fancy someone ‘nice’. I had achieved so much. I wasn’t prepared to settle for anything less than fireworks in love.
Fast-forward to today, and I’m 46 and engaged to a man who isn’t a high-flyer. He isn’t ‘A’-type or driven to achieve. Bill, 51, is laid-back, dependable and solid as a rock. His primary ambition is to enjoy life, rather than climb the career ladder or make pots of money.
I’ve swapped my London flat for a house on the Dorset coast and my high-adrenaline career for writing books, coaching women and growing tomatoes.
So, what changed? I changed.
In my late 30s, I began to slow down — a little. I also began to make sense of my love life with the help of a psychotherapist.
Katherine on holiday in Cuba in 1998, aged 27
Therapy opened my eyes to the fact that I was the common denominator in all of my failed relationships. It finally dawned on me that my full-on life was stopping me from having a healthy relationship with myself, never mind with a man.
I was drawn to commitment-phobes because I was terrified of commitment myself. I rejected good guys because I was scared of getting close.
Why? Well, when I was eight, the first love of my life, my dad, moved out of our family home in Aigburth, a pleasant area of South Liverpool.
My parents divorced and Dad, a clerk at a docks company, went to live with my grandmother.
My heart broke. Why risk that kind of hurt again?
I also feared love would curtail my precious freedom, a message I absorbed watching my mum, a school secretary, struggling on a low income to bring up my older brother, Gavin, and me on her own. My drive and determination to achieve against the odds were, I believe, the result of my upbringing, too. I was the first in my family to go to university. I wanted a different life.
So unavailable men were ideal — I would never have to commit, because they couldn’t.
As for keen guys, I judged them as not good enough, which was the perfect defence.
When I was 38, I met a man called Tom on an adventure weekend for singles — by then, I was actively seeking a partner, although without much success.
We dated for six months, until I began to find fault. I decided he wasn’t dynamic enough.
‘It’s not you. It’s me,’ I said. Tom didn’t know what had hit him. I told myself, yet again, that he just wasn’t ‘the right one’.
Two years later, I met the man who is now my fiance, Bill — and instantly put him, too, in the ‘not good enough’ category.
We met on a cycling trip in Cornwall with mutual friends in May 2011, when I was 40. I came along with a female pal from university — Bill was a regular cycling partner of another member of the group. I found him attractive, tall and broad-shouldered. But he wasn’t the career-driven alpha I wanted.
Admittedly, there was a little flirtation. But it went no further than talk. A few months later, we bumped into each other again, at a gathering of the same group of friends for a music festival.
Changed: Left, Katherine at a friend’s wedding in August 1997, aged 26, and right, with fiance Bill, who she met on a cycling trip in Cornwall with mutual friends in 2011, when she was 40
This time, we kissed — but, a few days later, I told him it could go no further.
He had gone to Portsmouth Polytechnic, worked in a clock-in, clock-out engineering job and prioritised play over work.
He lived in a bachelor pad in Poole, Dorset, and his mobile phone was pay-as-you-go because he hated contracts. He also didn’t want children, while I thought, at the time, that I did.
Still, we kept on meeting — and every time, at festivals and on weekends away with friends over the next two years, we ended up kissing and falling into the same tent. We started emailing in between meetings, too.
My head told me to end it, and I tried a number of times. Bill was always calm about my flightiness. He believes that what will happen will happen, and isn’t interested in chasing someone who isn’t sure of their feelings. So, he kept quiet — but always let me know he was there.
Perhaps it was his constancy that helped me to work out, finally, that I felt happy, relaxed and at peace in his company.
After yet another furtive kiss on a weekend away, I decided to try a new approach.
I was 43. I’d been dithering about Bill for nearly three years. Finally, I realised that I wanted to be in love more than I wanted to be a mum.
I also admitted to myself that, although we’d both dated other people, I hadn’t met anyone I liked more than Bill.
Back home in my London flat, I called him. ‘What do you want?’ I asked, needing to know how he really felt.
‘I want to be with you. I want to live with you,’ he said. My stomach did a somersault. I stammered out: ‘Shall we give it a go? Shall we commit properly this time?’
Committing was tough. I told myself I’d try it for six months, then re-evaluate.
Katherine working as a reporter in 2008, aged 37, on a military plane during a trip to the Middle East with the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown
My friend Clare — also single, in her 40s and looking for a stable relationship — kept me in check: ‘Can I remind you, Katherine, that you’ve committed to Bill for six months,’ she said, when I rang up in a panic, doubting myself.
Six months turned into nine, and I took the plunge and moved to Poole, renting out my flat in Islington. Less than a year later, Bill and I bought a home together.
And this spring, on top of a snowy mountain in the Alps after a hot chocolate stop, Bill slid down on to one knee and said: ‘Will you marry me?’ ‘Yes!’ I replied, through tears of joy and disbelief.
We plan to marry next summer, when we’ll have an outdoor ceremony in the Dorset countryside with camping, a hog roast and open fires.
My life looks nothing like the one I’d imagined for myself. I thought I would keep working as a reporter, marry a man with a high-powered job, live in a big house in London and maybe have a few kids.
But by chasing a fixed idea of success and happiness, I came close to ending up alone, with no partner to love.
Bill isn’t the man I thought I wanted, either, but he is everything I ever needed. I’m a seeker and a striver; Bill isn’t — but I think that’s why we work so well together. He’s solid, content and stable. While I go through emotional peaks and troughs, he hums along somewhere in the middle.
So many of my friends have also reassessed what they wanted from their lives. It’s not about giving up your career or settling for less than you deserve. But it is about slowing down, looking around and asking if what you’re doing — the stress, the drive to succeed and the unbridled ambition — is actually making you happy, and then finding the courage to change if it’s not.
I used to ride my Vespa through the gates of Parliament and go to press conferences in Downing Street. Now, I walk on the beach then sit down to write. Bill comes home around 5pm and we’ll both go cycling or take the paddleboard out together.
I haven’t lost my ambition. I just aspire to different things — to contentment and to helping other busy women identify their priorities, transform their lives and find love, if that’s what they want.
- Katherine is the author of How To Fall In Love: A 10-Step Journey To The Heart and a dating and relationships coach. Visit howtofallinlove.co.uk