I met three women in three cities. The one stuck in my head is older than me, not younger.

I'm Swiss, 54, divorced for five years, with two adult kids doing well in life, one settled in Zurich and the other finishing a master's in London, and I've just come through a full year of stacking up surgeries, nothing dramatic individually but exhausting altogether, the kind of thing that leaves you wanting to celebrate something the moment the last check-up is finally done.

Thailand was my celebration trip once all that was behind me. I'd lived in Shanghai for five years for work earlier in the last decade, so I wasn't entirely new to the Asian scene or its customs, but this time I was looking for something with more potential than just a casual, no-strings time, something closer to a second chance than an ordinary holiday.

First trip I'd been talking to a woman online for months before arriving, long messages most nights and the odd video call now and then that already gave me a decent sense of how she spoke, how she laughed, how she told stories about her day. She met me at the airport in Bangkok and drove us to Hua Hin, chatting away the whole journey as if we'd known each other for years, pointing things out the window and constantly asking if I was comfortable, if I was hungry, if I wanted to stop somewhere along the way.

Great smile, great personality, exceeded my expectations in person after all those weeks of messages. We stayed at a hotel near the beach, with sea views from the balcony that genuinely seemed to impress her, and had dinner at a seafood restaurant that first night with the tables almost touching the sand and the sound of the waves in the background, and everything was going perfectly well up to that point. Then, halfway through that same dinner, she brought up financial support, quite naturally, as if it were the most logical thing in the world at that stage of a relationship, mentioning specific figures almost in passing. I wasn't ready for that conversation so soon, we'd barely known each other in person for a few hours, so I politely suggested, as gently as I could, that she head home in the morning. She did, without much protest, and we had breakfast together before she left, no obvious hard feelings on either side.

Second trip, another online match, this one owned a restaurant in a small village alongside her mother, genuinely hard working, the kind who's on her feet from six in the morning until late at night without complaining, caring in a way that felt genuine rather than calculated, and we had ten good days together, riding around the village on her scooter, eating at her own restaurant nearly every night while she insisted I try a different dish each time.

The problem was her English was almost nonexistent, just a handful of set phrases she knew by heart, and my Thai didn't get much further than ordering the bill and saying thank you. We managed somehow during those ten days, with gestures, with the phone's translator, with a lot of patience on both sides, but once I got home the communication just didn't work at all anymore. Video calls were pointless if we couldn't understand each other, long awkward silences filled with forced smiles at the screen, no matter how much we tried with the translation app between us. Had to end it, just like that, with the feeling we'd had something nice that simply had no way of surviving the distance.

Third trip I decided to stack the odds and meet three women in three different cities, splitting my time between them to see how each one worked out in person, with an itinerary planned almost like a business trip rather than a holiday.

First stop Khon Kaen, a city I barely knew and that surprised me with how calm it felt compared to Bangkok or Pattaya. The woman I met was outside my usual age range by my own long-standing criteria, those filters you set up without thinking too much when building a profile, but seemed great from our chats, with a sense of humour that came through even in text messages and a way of writing that made clear she'd had a good education. She had a solid government job, was very attractive, dressed with impeccable taste without ever overdoing it, and when we met in person at the hotel entrance, with a small bunch of flowers I'd brought her, she actually paid for things herself without me asking or insisting, which in my experience up to that point was unheard of.

Four days together and I ended up checking out of the hotel and staying at hers, a simple but very well-kept house on the outskirts of the city, with a small garden full of plants she tended herself every morning before work. She took me to eat at a local market no tourist ever set foot in, showed me photos of her kids as children, and one afternoon we sat on the back porch not saying much of anything, just enjoying her company, with no calculations or plans attached. Great chemistry, lots of laughs, conversations that ran late without us noticing the time slipping by, simple dinners she made insisting I not lift a finger in the kitchen.

Pattaya next, a radical change of scene after the calm of Khon Kaen, with Beach Road full of people and noise at all hours. Nice woman, friendly and easy to get on with, but no real connection between us beyond the usual courtesy and a couple of decent dinners with nothing more to them than that. She wanted me to extend the trip and visit her village with her, introducing me to her family as if we'd already been together for months rather than a couple of days. I declined politely, aware that forcing something that wasn't there wasn't going to lead anywhere good for either of us.

The problem was that back at the hotel in Pattaya, lying awake unable to fully sleep with the air con humming in the background, I couldn't stop thinking about the woman from Khon Kaen. More than a week after getting home, already settled back into my routine in Zurich, she was still on my mind at all hours, popping into my thoughts at the most unexpected moments of the day, in the middle of a work meeting or while doing the shopping, and I'd decided, almost without fully realising it, that she was the one.

She owns her own home, has a good car she drives herself without depending on anyone, two adult kids who visit regularly on weekends, divorced nine years, financially sorted and not relying on me for anything at all. No concerns of any kind about money requests or needy families on the other end of the phone. Everything feels right, every piece falling into place in a way that had rarely happened to me before.

Except she's older than me. Not just outside my target age range, the one I'd been applying almost without thinking for years, she's actually a few years older than my 54, a fact that took me a moment to process when I finally asked her outright, half-joking, during one of those quiet dinners at her place.

She looks late thirties at most, not a single visible grey hair and an energy many women fifteen years younger don't have. The chemistry is outstanding, some of the best I've felt in years, maybe the best since my own marriage in its good days. Every box is ticked except that one.

So the question I'm putting out there is simple, and I've been turning it over since I landed back in Zurich. Am I being an idiot for letting a number on a document get in the way of someone who, in every other way that actually matters, seems like a genuinely good match?