Mutual liking

Rarely, ever so rarely, like when a hummingbird comes to you and sits on your finger and discourses with you about scientific inquiry, you'll find someone you like who also appears to like you. At the same time, even. You might both seem to like ("like" like) each other a lot. This situation is the best path to ensuring your own descent into a death spiral of evil-clown-type horror and misery. It's also the best way to push the boundaries of your own hypocrisy. For instance, as someone who claims to need privacy and space, you should already secretly (or openly) criticize friends with clingy, needy significant others. When discussing theoretical relationships, you need to say things like, "Well, I just need someone to tell me they like me once, and then I never need or want to hear it again. It's annoying when people do that." You should go so far as to believe this when you're not in a relationship-type thing, which you're obviously usually not. This way, when you get yourself into a mutual liking situation, it will feel more fraudulent when you convince yourself your partner hates you if they don't tell you they love you on endless repeat.

Basically, in a mutual liking situation, you should be like a goldfish, but some sort of fictional monster goldfish, where you forget every fifteen seconds every good thing your significant other has ever said or done while remembering and exacerbating all the things they've said or done that annoyed you. Without fifteen-second positive reinforcement, you should sink into total depression, where you can't think about anything except how much you don't need to be in this relationship with this person who's so obviously hateful and so obviously hates you. Their inability to sate your insane neediness should eventually drive you to crying in public while listening to Keane. Also, you can never be the one who says something positive first, because if you do, it will only prove that you're weak. So actually, you shouldn't be a goldfish so much as you should be a dependent, neurotic, unattractive, unworthy person who at least has some decent organs that should probably be donated now, while they're still in their prime. Except for your liver, which should be swollen like foie gras, and less tasty.

The best part about your being in this soul-crushing mutual like situation is that you spend all of your single time needing to be in this situation. As you've learned already, you should consider awful things like going out and meeting people so that you can potentially get into this situation. Once you've succeeded, you'll find there are times when you and your like partner even enjoy each other's company. This enjoyment will disappear quickly as you begin talking every day or, even worse, hanging out every day. At this point, you should start panicking and wondering how to tell this person, without hurting them, that there's no need to hang out every day. Then, when the day eventually comes that you haven't hung out or talked once, you should go ahead and convince yourself that they've deserted you and also given you AIDS.