WLTM knight in shining armour, must have GSOH

It's taken thirty-odd* years to reach this point, but after decades of pootling along nicely, fixing dodgy wardrobe doors, taking fax machines apart "because it's interesting, no, look, it is working now, well, all I did was read the manual" and colliding with male colleagues in attempts to out-polite each other through doorways, this evening I realised I want a knight in shining armour to gallop along and save me from dragons. Not that I've anything against dragons, in fact some of my best friends are dragons. I'm speaking metaphorically, since there are no legends about knights, armoured or otherwise, galloping up to relag a condenser pipe on a broken boiler. I don't know if there's a term for accumulated aggravation, but I seem to have spent the last decade using up my inner resources and now I would quite like someone to take the pressure off. So is this it? Is this what it's all about when the romantic balderdash is stripped away? When it all comes down to it, do people lash themselves to other people less out of a sense of communing souls and more from a fierce desire not to be the one outside trying to unfreeze the pipes with a hairdryer while the hood of your parka fills with snow? In the past, when women had no status outside marriage, it's hardly surprising that they'd hitch themselves to the best available protector. But now, when fully functioning spinsterdom is a very real option, are we willing to cling to our independence while knowing it's always going to be down to us when the boiler breaks down or the roof leaks? I'm not saying these are the province of men, simply that when life throws grey slush at us, sometimes it would be very nice to let someone else deal with it. I don't think I'm about to settle down and pop out a few sprogs. I prefer animals to children on almost every count and I've done my share of communal living. (Why do men have so many toiletries? Why do they leave the empty bottles in the bathroom cupboard? And X should be aware that I haven't forgotten the state she used to leave the kitchen in.) And I don't really think I'm even looking for someone on a white charger, or even on a donkey or a pushbike. Just right nownI would like a fairy godmother to give me a break for a while. But I'm curious if this sense of semi-permanent mid-thirties exhaustion is just my bad luck or if there's some weird genetic thing going on, trying to make me mix my chromosomes with the first available knight in the vain hope that this will make everything All Right. Because happy ever after is all very well but ever after is a long time to be stuck with someone. Now if you'll excuse me I've got to go and fiddle with the thermostat and prod the boiler. * Some would say very odd.