Once upon a spring, a friend went on a date. Their date fulfilled many checkboxes: attractive, employed, and competent. They went on several more dates. Soon after their seventh date, they experienced a hiatus. Multiple days later, the date phoned to talk. “It’s not you,” they reassured my friend, “but I’m not feeling it.”

Neither was my friend, but my friend wasn’t going to call up and say that.

Plus, it’s never us. It’s always them. That’s the oldest trick in the manual.