By Hadley | @wordsbyhadley |

Things change all the time. However, it often feels that the more things change, the more they stay the same, as they say.

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The bank balance, fridge contents and Twitter followers may all be changing at an inexplicable rate, but let’s focus on something more important – love.

We perhaps all secretly long for the day ‘Mr Right’ to comes marching into our living room and declare his love. Oh, and not forgetting those overpriced chocolates in Tesco, that are looking equally appealing. They’ll make for a good snack while we wait for him to park the Aston Martin.

Sometimes love can be as scarce as a parking space in London, with various obstacles forcing us to deviate from our original route (the Congestion Charge being one), in order to find the spot we’ve been hoping for.

When we do find a free space, it may not always be the perfect one we’ve been picturing in our minds.

You might need to walk a little further if you go for this one, another means you have to remember how to parallel park, whereas a spot in the next street is somewhat limited, given that it’s on a strict parking meter.

And I’m sorry to have to break it to you, but the parking space that requires minimal skill, located right outside of the place you’re going to, doesn’t exist.

For those of us who find ourselves without a parking space on this day of love, maybe it’s time to turn around and go home. Seriously. So what if you didn’t find one this time? There’s no point just going round in circles. Take some time for yourself and then, when you’re ready, get back out there.

As you wait, I’d thoroughly recommend reading a book that will make you see things from a different perspective.

Becoming by Laura Jane Williams can be read at any stage of the parking game; whether you’re on the look out, you’ve tried and failed, or you’re in the process of licking your wounds from the last attempt. Laura has written so honestly about her experiences of love, that I not only found myself nodding along as I turned the pages of her memoir, but ultimately respecting her for writing what the rest of us are too scared to express in a book, article or text message.

The perfect parking space doesn’t exist and neither does the perfect man. As our eyes gaze at love-themed decorations in Tesco this Valentine’s Day, it’s easy for us to become confused with the cliché of the red rose and the reality of the dandelion. Maybe it’s not a box of chocolates we need, but the ability to step back and readjust our expectations.

The parking space that’s on a meter is emotionally unavailable and the inability to change that will break your heart. Your hands will become clammy as you attempt to remember how to parallel park, but when you succeed you’ll relax and perhaps find a new appreciation of this new way of parking.

It’ll be up to you to decide if the parking space you have to walk an extra ten minutes for is worth the effort. And if all else fails, take the Tube. It’s hot, sweaty, intimately close, but it’s also fast and monotonous – if that’s your thing.

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Click here to read all the articles from FS #158