IT'S a hard life being single and, in the past, I have found the one way to cope with this is to take up an imaginary lover, a bit like an imaginary friend for grown-ups.

But having gone steady with my fantasy boyfriend for two years now, the time has come to put him to rest, and face the real world on my own.

He came into my life when I went to a friend's dinner party. Since then, we have shared a deep and respectful love, and we now have beautiful two children.

In reality, he's only seen me twice and probably can't even pronounce my name, but like I said, it's an imaginary thing.

He was the only other single person at the dinner party and I developed an instant crush on him. He was handsome and accomplished and I remember laughing a lot, though looking back, it was probably at my own jokes because he was a dark, brooding type.

When he didn't ask me out or get my phone number from our dinner party host, I put that down to his shyness and carried on fuelling the fantasy.

I met him again six months later at a party and again, I laughed at my own jokes and he brooded, but it didn't matter because by this time, our imaginary life together had taken on a world of its own.

After that, I entered an obsessive phase of the romance and started looking him up on the web at work. I remember finding a picture of him one day and getting quite a fright because I'd forgotten what he looked like in real life.

One ear seemed to hang lower than the other and he had an unseemly paunch but that only made him more intriguing to me. I even managed to find out his address and mark his street with a red love heart on my A-Z.

I was finally forced to dump him after an embarrassing incident one evening. I was deeply involved in an imaginary conversation with him as I was walking home from work when I heard some sniggering in the background.

Snapping out of my reverie, I saw a bunch of teenagers looked my way and shouting: "Having a good chat to yourself?" and whispers of "nutcase" as they walked by.

At that moment, I realised Dinner Party Date could no longer be my imaginary boyfriend because he was making me look mad in public and stopping me from having real boyfriends.

We said our goodbyes that night but it took me another few weeks to erase the love-heart from my A-Z and throw out the Internet picture of his irregular ears.

It's been pretty hard at times, but since the break-up, I think I have become a lonelier but saner person.