There was a moment recently where the most beautiful girl in the world confessed to me she didn’t think she was the most beautiful girl in the world. Obviously, she was clearly wrong, as is anyone who says something I don’t like o agree with. I replied to her that if I could have anything, I would want her to be able to see herself through my eyes just for a second so she could see what she really is.

And before you reach for the bucket to puke into, this is not going to be another 5000 words around the subject of how amazing Emma is and why i love her. Ok so there might be a little of that. But more importantly, if only women could truly appreciate the wonder we have for their species. When you hate yourself, feel like the world is falling part or that we don’t care, we fall to bits with you simply out of disbelief and the injustice of it. We just can’t say it in the way you want us to. We feel it, but it’s totally alien to our Neanderthal makeup, and our friends spend hours ridiculing us for it. Even in private it’s difficult to describe what we see and feel.

Our silence is not indifference, it’s because we can’t find the words to describe what we’re feeling. Every guy wants to be able to say it, and most of the time we just sit their in idle fascination. I wanted to take a few minutes out and help out my fellow cavemen by putting some of that feeling into words, and Emma is my natural reference point as the girl I want to be with and I get that speechless awe in an extreme way with her. Maybe your boyfriend feels the same way. Maybe you feel these things and can’t tell her. Maybe you don’t know we think these things, or that we’re so useless at communicating it. Maybe I’m just very weird and am the only guy that thinks like this.

Every woman should hear these words. Every man should take time to say them.

Girls wanting romance, and guys not bothering with it really frustrates me. Everyone sees it in movies reads about it in books and spends hours pining for some excitement to walk into their lives and spice it up and take them away to another place for the fairytale. Every girl should be romanced. Guys love the chase, girls love being chased. Its exciting and its fun. Its memories to tell the grandchildren and to look back on fondly. Apathy stops us because we can’t be bothered or expect someone else to get up and do it first. If you want that wonder in your life, you need to make it happen and seek it out. Fairytales follow me because I conjure them, not because I’m lucky somehow.

I wish everyone could see the world through my eyes and see what I see. Plato rightly observed that at a touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. Neil Gaiman furthered that by saying in their head, every lover is a madman, and in their heart, a minstrel. Love is a wondrous thing that cures all and gently breaks the back of its opposites that always seem to be more prevalent. It brings colour where there is black and white, music where there is silence, and warmth where it is freezing. But love is a dangerous thing, as when we experience a glimpse, it wakes us up to how little of it we have and how unhappy we really are with all the other parts of our lives.

It’s at that point where we associate love with that pain and squeeze it out so we don’t feel the discomfort and can get back into the comfort of our coma. We reject the wonderful feelings on the basis that they bring contrast to, and highlight the bad ones. Hope can spring fear and sadness.

So in my eyes there is Emma Louisa Brown, a pretty dramatic example of someone who raises my blood pressure to boiling point at even the mention of her name.

She’s a miracle to me. She amazes me and leaves me speechless. My mind goes blank and I stand there unable to say anything. All I can do is stare. Yes, that could look very strange in a public place, but I can’t help it. I’m doing my best to resolve it as it could get embarrassing.

Em is visually stunning. I don’t use that word lightly. Tall, long talk hair, piercing dark glistening eyes and long dark eyelashes. She has a quality I thought only my sis did, and that’s being so attention-grabbing that she’s the first person your eyes are drawn to in a crowded place, whether you are a boy or a girl. She’s incredibly charismatic, but the hilarious thing is she doesn’t realise it and happily carries on with her madness in total ignorance of the gaze of everyone around slowly becoming fixated on her. Her clothes just look amazing on her, and she’s the kind of person who really wears what she has on. And my god does she look good in them. She’s gorgeously slim, trendy, stylish and so wonderfully natural. She’s got the holy combination of size 8/10 and 34D.

Her beauty is in her symmetry, and she’s powerfully feminine and womanly in a humble and erudite way. Every cell, hair and texture is completely in place the way it should be and I couldn’t or wouldn’t change anything about her. The curves in her body immediately make me think about the natural mystery of the Golden Ratio that has been puzzled over for 2400 years, and how skin is painted so perfectly with her warm velvet essence. Everything compliments everything else to the millimetre. Long, gorgeous legs are balanced in accomplished proportion and are silky, glossy smooth. Her smell is hypnotic, like a secret garden in the most vibrant day of spring. When her hair gently brushes across my skin its beautiful agony.

She’s just so stupidly fucking perfect it drives me mad.

I love it when she laughs as it warms up the room, and you want to laugh with her. Its addictive. But she doesn’t smile enough. When she does, its beautiful. A pair of the most luscious full red lips give way to a distinctly sparkly set of teeth aligned in military formation that pair with the whites of her eyes. It’s the most gorgeous thing ever and enough to make you melt in itself. And you know she’s watching your heart. You can literally feel her intuition tapping her on the shoulder even though she tries to hide it. And she can’t hide it, in the same way it’s impossible to hide from her.

You get a sense of someone when they’re in the room. You feel the atmosphere and absorb their effect in the air. With her you feel her compassion, her kindness and her gentleness, even when its hidden under a frightened and battle-hardened outer shell. She’s an alluring juxtaposition of random chaos and ordered sensibility; absurdly clumsy but radiantly graceful. Anger her and you will experience her formidable and fiercesome integrity and an ever-growing righteous indignation that comes straight from the heart to emerge into her sleeve. I’m overwhelmed by her potential because she could do anything. She’s so much but thinks she’s so little. She has so many hidden gifts I can see that she hasn’t even thought about yet, and nobody has probably bothered to tell her about either.

She obsesses about looking her best, and she’s scared of anyone seeing her without her make up. If only she knew that it only adds the polish. She’s the most beautiful when she doesn’t realise it. It’s the times when she’s just her. When she’s just got up and her hair is everywhere; when the water is dripping off her straight after climbing out of the shower; when she’s panting from having to run or the blood at the surface of her skin is electrified from a workout in the gym or she’s walking around with the dressing gown hanging off her shoulders and she’s ambling around swinging the belt from side to side.

I see her in a long glamorous evening dress with diamond earrings, a shining million dollar necklace and elegant handbag, smiling and charming the guests under the chandelier in a ballroom; Lying on the couch in lightweights and a hooded top on a lazy Sunday afternoon and walking over to the bed like a snake in hazy red light, at 4am in black suspenders and high heels, ready to devour.

She’s perfect to me, but she’s never perfect enough for her. I can’t see the imperfections as I’m blinded by the perfection. There are no imperfections in my eyes as everything is in place and as it should be. I’m so mesmerised and blown away by the big things to notice the small ones. But it’s the small things that make up who she is and I don’t want a mannequin. The bits she hates are the parts that make me love her, as they are hers. It confuses me because she talks about things that are invisible to me.

When she’s there, time virtually stops and nothing matters any more like she’s opium. Its madness in slow motion, an insanity that knows no limits or bounds that I cannot master or control. I can’t help myself and I can’t stop myself. I’m glued to the warmth of her body pressed next to mine and the world disappears into the room. I want to kiss her all the time and can’t stop, It’s an unstoppable, unrelenting and ruthless drive of wanting her and needing to be as close to her as I can possibly get. I’m fighting myself every second to stop myself screaming that I love her and that I’m miss her before she’s even left.

Wherever she is, there is the world itself, and where she isn’t, there is despair and desolation. She’s elegant and sublime; an irresistible carnal temptation under my skin that compels me and never resolves to calm. The way she moves in harmony with me is exquisite and artistic, ornate and profane.

Her personal chaos amuses me as she’s in her own little world of contradiction, one who tries to live by her good sense but is obligated by her heart. Its not as schizophrenic as it seems as she works in a kaleidoscopic pattern of lateral thinking and considering everything from every angle so she can empathise with everyone who matters in any given situation. I can’t hide from her intuition and it makes me lie just to find somewhere where I can take shelter so she can’t see all my faults in one go.

She knows without me having to tell her and she never gives up because she knows I’m hiding. She looks across the room to roll her eyes at my madness and eccentricity and I’m smiling at her affection as I know she loves my mischief. But she’s strong enough to tell me to shut the fuck up when almost everyone else just says yes and agrees with everything I say. I can’t argue my way through because her heart is already in conversation with mine and won’t allow it.

Any man would feel masculine within 50ft of her. She stirs an angry determined fire in my soul that makes me want to conquer the world, invade every country on earth and shout from the rooftops. I want to do it to impress her and make her smile so she marvel at my strength and feel the energy she generates in me. I want to look out into the crowd and see her as the only person there when they give me awards I fought for but never cared about. I want her to fall so deeply in love with me that I don’t know where I end and she begins. I want to dream of the romance we live in and be paralysed by the butterflies she thought she’d only ever dreamt of feeling.

And she’s so precious that the only flower you could give her would be the only orchid left in the forest. When I think of all the times she’s cried because someone’s hurt her I fall into a second of murderous rage so violent that heaven itself would tremble at if it knew how deadly I was when it came over me. But it gives way to the tidal wave of love that consumes it when I ask why I wasn’t there to hold her as close to me as I could to dry her tears and promise that it would be OK. There’s a little girl inside who ran around the house in wonder and a mother sternly telling off her children for the same wilfulness they inherited from her in the first place.

She gets sad when I’m sad, and she’s grumpy when I am. When she’s lost I want to hide her away from the world somewhere quiet and safe so I can walk out the door and start the violent rampage against all those who have ever misjudged, misunderstood or mistreated her; a wildly destructive campaign that could only be stopped by her gentle whisper. She’s mine to protect from a very big and nasty world that has never stopped to notice just how special she is and never gave her what she really needed. One that doesn’t know her real strength because she’s too compassionate to wield it against anyone.

But most of all I forgive her for the past, for now and for the future. I love her for the simple wonder of who she is and lose myself in her because of the bittersweet mystery of where we could go together. It was always her, before I met her, even throughout when I was somewhere else, and when she was in front of me. It was always her, and it will always be her no matter where she goes.

And when I looked out the window onto the late night Newcastle skyline I asked myself why I wanted it all, why I was going to take it all and what I’d do with it all once I had it. I couldn’t answer. Until I looked back and realised that behind that door lay the most beautiful girl in the world and my most favourite person on planet earth. I want it all so I can share it with her and have more times at that window where I’m grateful that I can be in that situation and have those experiences.

My new reason for being the most powerful man on earth might be so she can be beside me and see that I am, and know that she’s one of the people who got me there and is the one I turn to when I need to remind myself of the things that matter and the things that don’t. And for all the times when the world’s going about its business, I can hide away and know if they took everything away they would have taken nothing. Because she will be everything.

And if she disappeared tomorrow and it went disastrously wrong (and there’s still time for that by the way), then I will still have felt that and learnt that lesson. I had that time to look back on.

Now I’m a spiritual guy. Not religious, spiritual. My faith is very, very private and you..ll rarely hear me talk about it. There’s nothing I hate more than happy-clappy, airy-fairy dumbass religious dickheads. I hate church and you wouldn’t ever catch me near one. I have a fucking brain and I’m not naïve. I don’t care what you believe, and I don’t have interest in telling you what I believe either. It’s my way. I’ve seen what I’ve seen and learnt the lessons I’ve learnt. My truth is mine, yours is yours. We each come to it in our own way and make our own decisions about how and why we’re here.

When I need to think about things, I often pray about them very quietly away from everyone and everything, which is often when I go for a walk in nature. For me it’s a form of meditation that allows me to take a few minutes out of the hustle and bustle to focus on me, the other people who are important in my life and the bigger picture. It’s a release of stress and allowing myself to let go of my worries and have a chat to the boss as he knows a lot more about everything I’m worried about than I do.

It’s why I believe certain things are predestined and why things in my life happen for a very specific reason. People are put into my life at certain times and places to teach me lessons and allow me to grow. It’s my choice in how I react to them and to learn about myself. It’s what keeps me sane and has made the man I am, and the man I will become. I pray before every speech, every meeting and every big event, and the peace of mind it gives me is inspirational and makes very big things happen. Its why the doors I knock on are already open, and why I’ve achieved so much in so little time.

Spirituality is so important to me. Every man of money or power I’ve ever met is intensely spiritual or religious. You are permitted to be in your position when you are wise and responsible enough to handle it and you are put there for a reason. You get a knock at the door.

I rarely talk about prayer but on this occasion it’s very relevant. Emma’s very important in my life, and very valuable. She’s a mirror and a catalyst. With her I’m naked and I can’t talk or reason my way around anything. It’s all about feelings and the heart. She knows it before I do. She’s said before that she knew she should persist with me but didn’t understand why. God knows I’ve put her through enough.

My way has always been to be fierce in all I do, but in a loving way. I’m an acquired taste and a strange mix of contradictory influences. I remember being so angry with her that I wanted to fucking strangle her. I thought about it, and I prayed about it privately in amongst a whole bunch of other stuff. I knew I was being a screaming child wanting my own way. I knew it. But my heart was enraged. I whinged and I whined, and I was furious. There are a lot of people who claim prayer is about getting back in touch with your subconscious mind, and I agree with that a lot. But I also know where the answers come from for me, and there are very specific reasons why I know it’s not necessary me talking to myself. Why? Because most of the time I arrogantly disagree with the answers.

But I had 2 experiences which affected both me, and my relationship with Emma profoundly. The first was when I was whingeing like a brat, and the answer that came back was simple and bizarre.

..Just love her, Alex…

Pardon? Small words, big impact. No big explanation. What the fuck does that mean? It kept me guessing for a while. It doesn’t matter exactly where you think the answer came from, only that it arrived somehow. It changed everything, as these things seem to do. I asked myself what love is, and what it means to love someone. A surprisingly difficult question that I thought I’d answered a long time ago.

We’re not talking about romantically falling in love or Barry White style lurve, we’re talking being patient, forgiving, understanding and just loving someone in the face of your frustration. It’s a choice. It means letting go and thinking of someone else. Realising your affection and just showing the kindness and compassion they need instead of pushing your own agenda.

The Greeks called it Agape. Not romantic love. Unconditional love. No strings, no bullshit. Easy and simple to everyone else, totally alien to me.

It’s fucking difficult. I never realised how little I’d loved anyone. Family, friends or lovers. Love is a verb; it’s not a fuzzy feeling. It’s a choice and an action. It’s really fucking hard. I thought forgiveness was bad. This one was worse. I spent a lot of time working that one out, and every time I feel upset, that comes into my mind. Just love her. That what she needs more than anything.

The second was again a time I was angry with her. She doesn’t know when it was, and will never know it. Again I was whingeing, and I was hurting when I felt I shouldn’t be. I wanted to hurt her for hurting me in a knee-jerk kind of way and rampaging through Waterloo station out of the Jubilee line. It was small and silly. Again the answer arrived randomly whilst I was muttering obscenities to myself and getting myself in a real spin.

‘should you love, or punish?..

Stopped in my tracks again. What the fuck?

This time it really was out of the blue. I had no idea what that meant. It drives me mad when it happens as I’m usually in a full on rage and have to stop to think about it like an itch under my skin. Then it started to become mysteriously clear in the peace that followed. It went back to the first point. Just love her. Simple as that. No matter what she’s done or the mistakes she’s made. Just love her. Not just her, but anyone or everyone. She’s a nice start and a good model.

There’s a first time for everything.

I’ve always punished. When someone upsets me, I take my revenge savagely. I won’t be vulnerable or made to suffer. I’ve punished for every single time I’ve felt denied, vulnerable, scared or wounded. I turn in on myself and I pull my shell over me to hide. I lash out and seethe, and let my silence do the talking. Everyone else curls up into a ball; I destroy whatever is around me causing the pain.

And I didn’t even know I was doing that until that moment. I’d been doing it all my life.

I was punished for every time I was scared, upset or needing help. Every time I upset someone or inconvenienced them I was punished physically or emotionally. I was beaten, locked away, ignored or reprimanded in spite. It is a template I learned to cope. Tit for tat, eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. Vengeance at its most raw and natural. Their silence or abandonment taught me to react in the same way to things that threatened me. I looked at my father in the weeks afterward and watched him punish my nephew when he didn’t do what he wanted him to. But this time I saw it and intervened. I watched him try to punish me for stopping him. And saw him recoil in shock at the authority I held in my expression.

But I didn’t punish him back. And I didn’t punish Emma. For the first time in my life I’ve been able to see what I’m doing and stop myself. Just as forgiveness opens doors, love does too. Love in the Agape sense is a powerful thing that destroys everything it encounters that threatens or undermines it. But love is choice, where its opposite isn’t. Love is proactive, where evil is reactive. Criticise someone and their instant reaction is not to leave you alone. It’s a sweet irony that their reaction is to seek validation from you in response. Hence the game. I punish you; you come back to me for validation. Power and control once and again. The universal human weakness.

Punishment is an interesting concept. We punish children as a last resort out of love, to illustrate there are consequences to our actions and choices. We discipline so that they learn self-discipline later in life. As time goes on, we have less and less need to do either, as they take more and more responsibility for their actions. But punishment implies guilt and a debt that must be paid for something we have done wrong. Most of the people haven’t done any implicitly morally wrong, just upset me somehow or denied me what I want. Love doesn’t delight in doing evil or punish for its own reasons. Punishment has a role and is there for the ultimate good of a child or a community.

The lesson is that difference counts and is more valuable than familiarity. Emma’s profoundly different to me in a lock and key way. Some people are catalysts that bring things to the surface that others can’t, just by being who they are. I have a lot of them in my life and they are precious to me. It’s for the same reason that safety, love and trust in relationships opens Pandora’s box and the bad stuff comes out at the times you don’t expect as you’re so happy and secure. It’s a matter of context and having the maturity to make the right judgement at the right time from the right understanding. The past doesn’t matter, because it’s from today our actions count. The mistakes you made yesterday I forgive today so I can be free to love you now and tomorrow.

And you ask why I love Emma and think so much of her. It’s not because of her beauty, although that’s pretty profound in itself. It’s because I want to be a great man. And she has played her part already in making me that man, without knowing she has done anything.

And yes, I am falling for her. It’s annoying.