By Pam Francis and originally published Daily Express Nov 04

Peta Heskell, 52, the attractive blonde relationship guru who runs courses on looking for love,  has written four books on flirting and regularly counsels clients through relationship break-ups wasn’t prepared for what happened when she got dumped for the first time in her life…..by her own boyfriend....

When it comes to flirting, Peta Heskell knows her stuff. For the past five years the high-spirited blonde with the infectious laugh has been running workshops for singles who don’t want to be.

And dishing out relationship advice on TV, radio and in her four best-selling books. Quite often, as if proof were needed that she is the Flirt Coach queen, her own boyfriend Paul, would be by her side. A 40-something, dark-haired motorbike journalist, with a degree in psychology, looking distinctly flirty and sexy in his black motorbike leathers.

They had first met seven years ago while she was still in a 15-year relationship with her boyfriend Ken.

Paul was the  motorbike taxi who delivered hypnotist Paul McKenna to a convention in London where Peta was helping. And the charismatic flirt coach, putting her own advice into practice, asked him if he would take her for a spin on his bike.

 Four years ago, having grown apart from her long-term boyfriend Ken, she finished that relationship, and shortly afterwards, hooked up with Paul once again.

Earlier this year after as he playfully accused her of ‘sidling into his house like a cat’ with her belongings, Peta was busily building  up a cosy relationship with the 48-year-old  London batchelor in his desperately  untidy house in Hampton, and was flying high with her books and courses on flirting.

Until her world fell apart when earlier this year,   her well-honed intuition told her that there was another woman on the scene.

“Paul had always said that his ideal woman was someone who could ride a motorbike as well as him.  And earlier in the year he had been away riding with a group of people somewhere in Europe.

“One of them was a woman architect with a young son who had ridden her bike all over the world. And when he called me from a service station on the way home from a reunion in Wales with these people,  he mentioned this particular woman and that her son was riding on the back of his bike which I thought was odd.

“He arrived home about 1am from her beautiful home where he had been socialising with a whole load of interesting bike people.

“During our four years I had learned to ride a motorbike and still have my own scooter. But I had always encouraged him to go and do his own thing, in the same way as I did. I thought it was healthy.”

The next day, Peta was fast becoming convinced that their relationship was far from healthy.

“Paul was out and I just had this compulsion to  read his emails, which I had never done before, even though I had access to his computer. It’s not something that anybody should ever do,” she adds, quickly.

“But I would also say, when the crunch comes, it’s as if you know what is happening, so you just have to find the evidence,” she says, without even a hint of sheepishness.

The emails confirmed her worst suspicions.

“They weren’t all full of lust and love. They were all a bit schoolboyish. “I like your company”… that sort of thing. You could see that there was something going on, that he was chasing her. But I had the feeling that nothing had actually happened.

“He called me and asked if we were out of milk. I said, forget the f—ing milk, I’m leaving.”

As they talked it through, he finally admitted the truth.

“He said that he did fancy her and that our relationship had come to its natural end.”

In his mind maybe. But Peta was devastated.

She prolonged the agony moving her belongings out bit by bit and back into her rented studio flat, until a friend arrived with a car and forced her to grab her remaining possessions and leave.

“It was then as I unpacked the last few books that I realised it was over. I was completely devastated,  I sent a multi text to all my girlfriends, and did all the usual things like crying under the duvet and waking up  with nightmares about them. The only positive thing was that I started losing weight!”

Aware that her experience was relatively minor when compared to others,  she still battled with what was for her, unfamiliar pain.

“There was an enormous amount of self pity, of oh my God, what am I going to do.

“I did what most people that I counsel do. I went inside my head and started to generate an enormous amount of technicolour movies with voice and sound, replaying things over and over. Some people go back over the past with their movies. If only I had done this or said that. Others like me play future movies of seeing him with her. It was like torture.”

She reminded herself what she had said to broken-hearted clients.

“Things happen to us in life and it is our choice how to react to them. Every time we go back to a place that reminds us of a person, we can either choose to get on that thought train and let it take us off to Gloomsville or not. And I was on that train.

“What’s more it dawned on me it  was the first time in my life I had been dumped…ever.”

The only other time a man had left her was at the age of 30 when her boyfriend of two years, Steve Currie, a former base player with T Rex was killed in a car crash. They had been living together in Portugal at the time.

“It is very different when someone leaves you because they die, because the relationship remains sacred. I had not been dumped. Steve had gone, but I was allowed to hold his memory there and talk to him or the sense of him. And I felt incredibly comforted by that.

“Also you get far more sympathy. If you say, my boyfriend died 20 years ago, people say oh I am sorry. But if I said 20 years ago my partner left me, they would say, get over it woman.”

But by now, Peta was definitely on board the express thought train, and rapidly approaching Gloomsville.

“I had this devastating realisation in that…I am the Flirtcoach who goes on TV to talk about relationships… and I haven’t even got a boyfriend!

“I would be on TV talking about how I’d pulled my boyfriend by asking for a ride on his motorbike,  and the cameras would flash to this good-looking dark-haired guy. And I’d be thinking, oh that’s cool.

“Now I look back and realise that in a way, he was arm candy for me. It takes quite a lot to actually admit the fact that I had woven him into the fabric of my whole persona of this flirt coach TV personality, vaguely minor celebrity.”

Wondering how she could help heal her own heart, Peta made the brave decision to go public and write about her experiences on her website.

“While I was writing it, it was as though there was this person who was deeply hurt, and there was this other person like an angel on the shoulder who  was also me, bringing in all the wisdom I had learned over the years.

“I thought, I don’t care. I hope people read it and get something from. I got so many emails from people saying it was refreshing to know that a person like me, supposedly a relationship guru, can go through this stuff as well.”

Since they broke up in April, Paul has continued his relationship and Peta is single for the first time in her life. She has tried internet dating, but is quite content to leave love on the back burner…for now.

“In some ways breaking up is one of the best things that has happened to me. First of all it has made me more understanding and compassionate towards people who I counsel because now I understand what they are going through.

“Plus my career has really taken off, and I have travelled several times to America and to the Caribbean to set up other courses.

“It’s like everything in life, when something happens to you, you think it’s bad at the time, but it generally, no matter what, it opens other doors.

“I think every relationship teaches you something about yourself. I want to try and help people move on and see the possibilities that are there for them.

“I’m not that fussed about meeting a man right now. Certainly not for sex. When I was 35, I would hang out with guys and have one night stands but not any more.

“What I believe is that if I focus on my work, some man who is more of a match for me will appear in my life.  There is no panic for it to happen.

“I don’t even think of myself as a single person. I am just me, living a new stage of my life. And I think it might be one of the most exciting adventures I have embarked upon.”