LOST in London

"I'm having a New York moment," I said to my flatmate the other day, by which I meant I wanted to be wined and dined by someone who I would feel no responsibility towards, to disappear afterwards and bask in my own anonymity, to laugh about it with my friends the following evening, and to never think about him again.

Between the ages of 23 and 27 I lived and breathed a Manhattan existence. I drank cosmopolitans and danced on bars until dawn; I went on dates with men who subscribed to the "threesome rule" (drink, supper, lunge); I wended my way from one party to the other down the block, in five-dollar cab rides.

I led the spontaneous, transitory and blissfully selfish existence enjoyed by anyone who lives away from home.

What's more, I acknowledged the absurdity of my life as I lived it. But I swore I would not turn 30 in a city where men were outnumbered by three to one.

I wanted what New York lacked: permanence. A relationship with a future (my longest one had been two months), a job that would last (I worked for the United Nations - an inflexible job should I want children), a chance of one day owning a flat (only an option for the super-rich in New York).

So back I came to London, at the age of 28. I became a freelance writer, basing myself in a friend's flat in Victoria, replacing dive bars with dinner parties, five-minute cab rides with hour-long train delays, single girlfriends with comfortable couples, an empty diary with a jam-packed one.

No matter, I told myself, happily grabbing reality before I lost touch with it. Compensation will come in the form of good weekends, newspapers in country pubs, family values, friendships with people whose last name I would recall and men (so many men) who were prepared to commit.

Yet now, two years and a mere three dates down the line, I have become a statistic in a new report claiming that in the capital, women outnumber men by 50,000 - we're in London, on our Own, Single and Twentysomething. In others words, it says, we are LOST.

Another recent report says that today's younger generation are twice as likely to be depressed at 30 than 10 years ago. Sometimes that is how I feel: lost, lonely, depressed.

I look at my mother, who by my age (29) had two of her five children. I asked her how she managed to accommodate the changes within herself as she grew up. If I had married my first boyfriend, I said, we would not be together now. She married at 21 and has been married to my father for more than 30 years.

"We married strangers," she told me, "which meant we had to be malleable. We adapted instead of changed. The problem with you lot is that you are all too fussy."

I replied that unlike "her lot", "us LOST lot" believe in love. We don't need the support of a man in the same way as they did. Economically independent and socially secure, we can afford to wait. And yet, we often ask ourselves, as we try to expand our horizons - going to parties hosted by strangers, calling people we have only met once, hosting dinners filled with "randoms" - where do we draw the line of compromise? How long do we give a man before we admit defeat?

My three dates have not lasted more than a couple of weeks. The first was a friend of a friend, whom I met at a birthday party. As is the norm in London, it seems, we flirted by ignoring each other, daring to talk right at the end of the party.

Rather pathetically, I was impressed when he got my number and rang to ask me to supper: this was a new type of London man, I mused, from the 23-year-olds I left behind. I was less impressed by the dating venue: the "local" (ie pub).

"I want to dress up," I protested to my flatmate, as I slammed on sneakers and jeans in place of heels and a skirt. I was also confused - does a pub date mean he is relaxed yet interested, or that he does not care enough to impress?

He was tall and fair and worked for the BBC, he was interesting and smart, he took me to a nice Italian restaurant and he paid. But he asked me so few questions that by the time I got home, alone, I tried to list the things he might know about me. I was not sure there were any. My flatmate, who, having been single for four years, has recently fallen in love, said I should give him another go. My mother's words rang in my ears.

"Too fussy"? Fine. I would try again. So I did, but still he seemed disinterested. Enough, I thought. And that was that.

The second date was worse. It was with an American from New York, and I was set up on a blind date with him by a mutual friend. We met. He was 40 and an "entrepreneur".

This time I had the opportunity to dress up, as he spoilt me with supper in one of London's swankier hotels. But by the end of dinner I was undecided and ready for another drink. Was it female intuition or paranoia that arrived with the bill, which he suspiciously paid for in cash.

"Are you married?" I asked suddenly.

"Er, yes, but it's sort of coming to an end." Er, right. That, again, was that.

The third date was the best. Again tall (yes, there's a theme), I met him, also through a friend who I had met working on a story for a magazine. We went to a nice, but not too nice, restaurant in Soho; he worked for Shell, and he made me laugh, a lot.

I saw him four more times and dared to get excited. Could it be that here was the man I was waiting for? Sensitive, interesting, amusing. A great cook, even. Sadly not. When he ended it a month later because he "couldn't see it going anywhere", I found myself asking my flatmate what the hell was wrong with me. "It's not you," she said. "He'll never get anyone. Too fussy."

A kiss beside the Serpentine with the Fussy Man was the closest any of them got to the bedroom. When it comes to sex and dating, the general consensus among the LOST girls is that if you want it, you can get it, but that there's little point unless it means something.

We know what we want, both in work and play, which is perhaps the problem. We do not want to waste our time with things that will not last. Because, although office hours may be too long, the freelance life may get lonely, and the dates may be few and far between, I am proud to be a member of a tribe which typically has a host of friends to call upon to enjoy the other parts of our lives.

And we would not have it any other way. Only this morning I was reminiscing with my flatmate about a wedding we went to this time last year. She was working too hard and she had nowhere to live. "I feel so lost," she had said to me at the time.

And then at that summer wedding, she fell in love with a lovely man and was "found".

I have faith that, one day, I will be, too.