I was 31, burned out, and single. Would a string of dates with French men bring back my joie de vivre?

I was working 80-hour weeks and having no luck on the New York singles scene. A move to Europe opened my mind – and helped me find love in the most unexpected place

“Tu es où?” I texted, peeking out the balcony to see if he was near. I checked my lipstick in the mirror over the mantelpiece. Then fretted whether my kindergarten-level French was off-putting.

“I’m coming,” he texted. And before I could wonder about inviting a strange man to my home for a first date in a foreign country, Thomas knocked. Soon after we exchanged la bise and he took off his layers of winter gear, I realised he was even more attractive than his Tinder photos, with messy blond hair and a glimpse of ultra-defined abs. While fetching wine as insouciantly as I could, inside my head I was screaming: “The plan is working!”

I had hatched it in fall of 2018, burned out from nearly a decade of living in New York. I’d been working full-time as an editor and writing my novel at night and on weekends for three years. I pushed myself so hard that my schedule was written in my diary in 10-minute increments. On Friday evenings, I came home and lugged an Ikea bag of dirty clothes to the coin laundromat. After bringing it back up the five flights of stairs, I’d yet again open the manuscript file that I knew, statistically, may never get published. Meanwhile, my peers were moving up the ladder, getting married and buying fancy flats with basic appliances. At 31, I felt I had nothing to show for it.