Jacqui Lambie: ‘Look out guys, I’m ready for love — and sex again’
FORMER Senator and army corporal Jacqui Lambie is on a military-style mission to find love and won’t stop until she finds Mr Right. Here she details why she’s rejoined the dating scene.
Opinion
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YES, it’s true. Just like anyone else out there, I’m looking for love. So I am travelling around Australia and I’m playing the dating game.
It’s time I get serious and to do something that is really important to me — get married and see it all the way through, the good and the bad.
I don’t want to have to go through a divorce. I just want somebody that is going to be my best friend for the rest of my life.
Love me or not, most people out there know that with me what you see is what you get. Before I spent my few years in the Senate I struggled for a decade with pain and depression caused by the major back injury I suffered in the Army.
But after involuntarily stepping down from the Senate (like so many other politicians now, I had problems with my father’s nationality) it’s time to get serious and look for love.
It’s fifteen years since I’ve had a romantic relationship. I guess I’d been by myself for so long I’d just switched off on that side of life.
In my book there’s a quote from the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, when I was fighting with Veterans Affairs: “I don’t feel I have anything to offer in relation to maintaining a relationship. Nor do I want to be involved in another relationship because sex should be a part of it and I realise how much I can’t give or do because of my back pain.”
Well, guys, that’s changed. Look out.
Something has happened in the years since I joined the Senate. After struggling with the constraints of being in Clive Palmer’s political outfit, I learned that I could be my own woman in politics and survive.
And I feel the same about love.
This is me, like it or not. I’m in this for real. Plenty of my friends, lovely women who are single in the middle of life, have given up. I
realised I’m not prepared to give up, at least not yet. There has to be an Aussie man out there that has what I’m looking for.
I’ve always thought I’ll know it when the right man is standing in front of me. But, of course, it’s not that simple.
I’ve been trying bloody hard on the dating apps, eHarmony, Bumble and even Tinder. It’s not that easy. People actually don’t believe it’s me on there.
They all sort of stay engaged with me for probably five or six comments and then when I actually tell them I’m on the dating scene and cement that in with them, they seem to be running like water.
I just can’t win. I don’t know whether they think they’re being dragged into something or whether “Jacqui Lambie” is scaring the hell out of them but it’s basically disbelief.
I reckon there should be a Senate inquiry into those apps; they’re just not all they’re cracked up to be. If you ask your mates, everyone has had a tough time meeting people online or via Bumble and the rest of them.
Sure there’ve been some successes, even marriages, but there’s a lot of pain and heartache along the way.
I can tell you where you can go and stick your apps, because they’re not working for me. I am quickly losing my self-esteem — they are about as much help as I am when it comes to the dating game.
So far in my love journey, the best thing I’ve done is enlist the help of a relationship consultant — Samantha Jayne from Blue Label Life. I was pretty sceptical but she is lovely and has carefully helped me through what I’m really looking for, how to present that to the world — even with hair and makeup.
Suddenly, when I was all made up and ready, I had to face the reality: I’m actually going to go and have a romantic dinner with this bloke. Yikes! So, did it work? You’ll have to have a look tonight and judge for yourself.
*Jacqui Lambie’s quest for love airs tonight on Seven’s Sunday Night at 8.30pm.