In which love is a full inbox

This weekend, it is mine and my boyfriend’s two-year anniversary. True, I pondered the correct grammatical arrangement of that sentence for about the same amount of time as I’ve spent mulling over the significance of the occasion (my boyfriend’s and mine? My and my boyfriend’s? My boyfriend’s and I’s?) - but still, it’s nice to mark the date.

Of course, it will be hard to top our one-year anniversary, where he took me to see Dolly Parton at the o2 and I bought him a dressing gown, but we can still try. We have gone for the ultimate luxury, staying in a posh hotel in the city we already live in – because nothing says, “I love you” like “oh look, complimentary slippers!”

From the time on our second date when he accidentally stood me up and found me drowning my sorrows in Primark, to the moment last Sunday night where we both realised we secretly didn’t hate Coldplay, it’s been a beautiful journey akin to one of the great Hollywood pairings (Laurel and Hardy?).

But the reason I’m telling you all this isn’t simply an act of awful coupled-up smuggery, you understand (though if my 17-year-old self is reading this, I’d like to say: ‘it’s fine, you get one in the end! Oh, and stop wearing that.’). No, it’s actually an affirmation for anyone out there who might be combing cyberspace and concluding that everybody single left is a Doctor Who monster with the personality of unmarinated tofu.

You see, we met on the internet. Or, as I’m planning on having printed on matching t-shirts soon, ‘Tim Berners-Lee brought us together.’ If you’d like specifics, we went for My Single Friend. Because Match.com is for hussies, POF for cheapskates, and eHarmony for people so keen to get married THIS YEAR that they’ve already bought the cake-topper. Plus, the sign-up-your-mate format guarantees that they do have at least one friend – which, call me a fusspot, is fairly high on my list of criteria.

I find it sort of incredible that there is still a stigma surrounding online dating. It just makes such good sense. Why keep on hoping you’ll bump into the love of your life in a pub, or at a bus stop, when you could search and appropriately filter thousands of eligible people from the comfort of your own sofa? Besides, someone you meet at the bus stop is no less likely to be a murderer than someone you meet online, now are they?

So I bid you, singles, go forth! Find yourself a nice new beau while you’re doing your online Tesco shop, safe in the knowledge that I’ve roadtested the path thoroughly, and two years on still not fallen in any potholes.

I’d better not hold my breath though – he hasn’t seen the follow-up to the dressing gown yet.

(He will tell me he loved this column, by the way, because he is in it. And it is the eternal law of the columnist’s life that people say, “I loved that article” when what they mean is “I was in it! You mentioned ME! I’d be famous if it wasn’t in Worthing!”)