When you turn 30 and you’re still single, everyone suddenly becomes interested in your love life.

At every wedding and family function, someone comes up and asks, “So, when are you getting married?” Then the advice starts. You should settle down now. Don’t be too picky. You won’t find someone perfect. And my favourite one: “What exactly are you looking for?”

I just smile. How do I explain my idea of love in two minutes, standing near the buffet?

So I’m writing it down.

I’ve always liked how Kafka and Dostoevsky write about love. Kafka especially. When he writes about missing someone, you feel it. One small conversation stays in your mind for days, that kind of thing. But then I read about his life and it confused me. He got engaged to Felice Bauer twice and broke it off both times. He wrote her hundreds of letters, and he still couldn’t live with her. So was it love, or was it love only from far away?

Dostoevsky has a line in The Brothers Karamazov: love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. I keep reading it again. Love in dreams is easy. Letters, missing someone, waiting. Love in action is when you see the other person’s fears, their bad days, their irritating habits, and you still choose them.

At 30, I want the second one.

If I have to give an example, I’d say Toto and Susie Wolff. 

Toto runs Mercedes. Susie built her own career in motorsport, and now she leads F1 Academy. Both are ambitious, both are doing big things, and from the outside at least, neither of them had to become small for the other one. Of course, we only see what’s public. I don’t know what their fights at home look like. Still, it’s the closest example I have.

I don’t want someone who says yes to everything I say. Say I come home excited about a new business idea. I explain everything, and instead of “Wow, amazing,” she asks, “But what if this doesn’t work? Have you thought about that?”

Then we discuss it for an hour. Maybe she proves me wrong. Maybe I convince her. But both of us learn something. For me, that is romantic.

I also think a little competition is good. Not about who earns more or who is more important. I mean pushing each other. If she achieves something big, I want to be the happiest person in the room, and maybe a little jealous too, in a good way. If she’s better than me at something, I’ll learn it from her. And I hope she feels the same about me.

But life can’t be a competition all the time. Some days I just want coffee, talking about nothing, and stupid jokes. Some days one of us will come home after a horrible day at work. That day, the other one should just listen. No advice, no solutions. Love is not always about making someone better. Sometimes you let them have a bad day and don’t make them feel bad for it.

And nobody is perfect. I’m not. The relatives asking me at weddings are not. We all overthink, we get angry, and sometimes we don’t even understand ourselves. I just want someone who can fight with me in the morning and still ask me in the evening, “Did you eat?” Someone I can talk to about business, books, F1, or random silly things. And some days we won’t talk at all, just sit together. That’s fine too.

So no, I’m not in a hurry just because I’m 30. I’m not waiting for a perfect person. I know there isn’t one. I want a relationship where nobody has to become smaller for the other to grow. Her friends, my friends. Her career, my career. And we still want to share our lives. Sometimes she’ll be ahead, sometimes I will. Sometimes both of us will be lost.

“I can’t live without you.” I don’t think I’ll ever say that. I can live without her, and she can live without me. What I’d want to say is something like: I have my own life, my own dreams, so many things I want to do. You have yours. But out of all the people in the world, I still want to do this journey with you.

So the next time a relative asks me what I’m looking for, this is my answer.

It’s longer than two minutes. Sorry.