Love According to Air

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine found out her boyfriend was cheating on her and broke up with him. But when I saw her earlier this week, she told me that she is back with the guy again, and that he promised never to do it again...classic.

So I told her, "Look, if a guy cheated on you once, he will cheat on you again. Break up with him. There are plenty of better guys out there."

Now, my friends come to me for love advice all the time, so I hear stories like these all the time. The funny thing is, they would always say that they can't just leave, because they love the guy. But then a couple of months down the road, something always happens, and they still end up breaking up with these guys.

But this friend is different. She is not naive by any means, and I could tell that she has doubts about the relationship. So I wasn't surprised when she asked me "but how?" Even so, I didn't have an answer for her.

Love is funny. When you first fall in love with someone, you knew that they are the one. You can see yourself spending the rest of your life with them, and it doesn't matter if they make a complete fool of themselves. At the end of the day, you'll still think the world of them.

But cupid must have attached an expiry date to each of his arrows and forgot to tell us about it. Sooner or later, the connections you once felt would be gone. After that, the person can be right beside you, but you feel as though the both of you are walking away from each other. You can be holding each other's hands, but it will feel as though you're just trying to hang onto something that is slowly slipping away. You will no longer laugh about the same jokes, and there will be fights...ah yes...the fights. At first, it was just little things, and you'll always recover from them. But as time goes on, they always get worse, until you've said everything: even things you never thought about. Then the fighting will stop, because you just can't fight anymore.

So how do you walk away? We've all tried setting our friends up with dates after a bad breakup, and I can't remember a single instance when that has worked. In fact, I still don't know what the best way to walk away is.

Then again, maybe there is no right answer. Maybe the best thing I can do is just take my friend out, and let her meet someone naturally.

Who knows?