I know this is a super cheesy and melodramatic thing to say.  But.  My least favorite thing in the whole world is watching romance die.

I’m not talking about losing love.  The love is still there, which is why the death of romance sucks SO bad.

All the tiny little magnificent things that make you fall in love with someone.  The way he visits you at work.  The way he can’t get enough of you.  The way he looks at you.  The way he wants to introduce you to everyone he knows.  The way he does small, thoughtful things without being prompted or asked.  Flirtation.  You text each other constantly.  He shows up at your house when he knows you’re home.  He’s so excited.  Then slowly, inevitably, all these tiny things that mean so much slowly drop away one by one, and you watch helplessly and frantically as they slip away until where you used to have a million amazing reasons to be miraculously happy, you have one thing left, and that thing HURTS.  It hurts because you love this man so much you can barely breathe and you don’t know what the fuck to do with it.  Because now he can get enough of you.  You’re a chore.  Nobody likes doing chores.

I feel comfortable making this broad-stroke generalization:  Men don’t understand that thoughtlessness is mean.  They know it’s mean to yell, and it’s mean to cheat, and it’s mean to hit, and it’s mean to lie.  But they don’t understand that being thoughtless is mean.  It’s NOT an accident to not try.  If you care about someone, you make a fucking effort.  You remember stuff.  You put in an appearance.  You save her some of the good part of yourself.  You don’t leave her wondering what happened.  You don’t leave her hanging.  You find a way.  You don’t keep giving her reasons to question where she stands, because after a while she’s only going to have one question left.

“Are you ready, boots?”