“I’ll forgive you, but my best friend won’t.”

That’s what I thought each time I backslid into the same unsatisfying situationship. I’d fall back into bed with this person, but I’d only be half there. The rest of me was busy scripting what I’d tell my best friend, brainstorming ways to avoid the look on her face that said her patience was thinning.

Credit: Robin Cowcher

I’d tell her it would be different this time. When that didn’t convince her, I’d try appealing to her romantic side. I would say that it was cosmic and undeniable, because two people getting drawn back to one another again and again had to mean something.

Time would later tell that the “something” it meant was that I was an idiot.

Truthfully, I didn’t even really like him. He was good-looking and everything, but his intermittent interest in me saw me drooling like Pavlov’s golden Lab each time I heard the chime of a new text; he wasn’t funny or very nice, he wouldn’t meet my friends, and he used to send me home without so much as a postcoital cuddle. The six-month stretch between our first date and the day I was done for good was one of the lowest periods of my life. I saw the red flags, I........

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