“It’s easy for people to romanticise others when they feel excited or hopeful about the prospect of love,” she explains. “The trouble is, when we create scenarios in our minds that aren’t true, we create pseudo-relationships with people that we aren’t actually having relationships with.

“Energetically, this can be detrimental if you want to find love in the real world. Creating pseudo-relationships in one’s mind can happen with someone we’ve never even spoken to or, more often than not, it happens with singles who’ve just connected with each other online. It can be really interesting – fun, but ultimately complicated – depending on the self-awareness levels of the ‘fantasists’.

“Romanticising something or someone that isn’t real can cause us to invest time, energy and emotion into a world of fantasy, which can keep singles single. Furthermore, if someone is romanticising someone that they have just met, previous partners or someone they don’t quite know yet, then the reality of real-life connection might not match up.

“If you’re romanticising something or someone it could be your brain’s response to keeping you safe on an emotional level and in fantasy land from the reality of putting yourself out there, forming a connection and through fear of what could happen IRL.”

“It can be a fun and playful way to be optimistic about the romantic future, but as long as it is done consciously, whereby one knows what’s real between a fantasy in one’s mind and reality in the present. If the lines become blurred or the fantasy becomes all-consuming, this could lead to a very serious misinterpretation of events, which is often what people mean by ‘delusion’ – a state of psychosis.”

Nevertheless, despite the dangers, being a dreamer is still a good thing. In my case, I wanted a certain level of love, with the quality I had dreamt of, and with the power I’d hoped for. It meant that when it finally came into my life, I recognised it; I’d seen it on the faces of all the boys and men in my head. When I saw it for the first time in real life, I made sure not to let it go.

And I still dream. To this day, I’m still a little bit delusional at 28. That’s OK, and even the experts agree. In a lot of ways, it keeps your heart, and your head, open.

“Ultimately, as long as the fantasy is something that you are intermittently choosing and playing with for fun, joy and lightheartedness then I say eat your heart out,” Ryan adds.

“But at the end of the day, nothing beats the real human connection. The feeling of love and sense of belonging in real life – that’s the good feeling.

“And it’s out there for you; you just have to have faith and find it.”

Can being delusional in love help you or hinder you?