Most of us at some point in our lives have gone against our better judgment and gotten involved with someone for all the wrong reasons, which can include but not be limited to:

1. Because they’re more fun and charismatic than Johnny Depp in Blow
2. Because you like hanging out / partying like an animal with their friends
3. Because they offer your really nice dinners / long talks on the phone / sex / a TV watching companion / tables at clubs / whatever it is you seem to be inexplicably lacking at the time
4. Because they’re so good-looking it hurts / disintegrates your brain

Relationships that bloom out of any reason similar to these are usually doomed before the fateful first kiss. You embark on what I like to call, “pathetically using a guy to fulfill whatever given emptiness you have at that time,” whether it be a need for a cooking partner or a need for a partner in crime at New York clubs. An underlying, universal cause for why this happens usually has something to do with you as a woman just needing feel sexy or validated. Men are aware of this annoying and damaging gene we posses, and most strive to take advantage of it at all times. Women let their guard down and allow the male specimen of their desire to fulfill whatever’s making their days just good instead of great, and embark on what I like to call the “grey relationship.”

Instead of being based on love and mutual respect, a grey relationship allows you and your partner to essentially use each other as a quick fix to much deeper-rooted emotional problems. And it makes sense. Why would anyone, male or female, want to really wallow in the fact that they feel depressed when instead of processing disappointment or pain, they can cover it with a nifty and distracting band aid in the form of a fellow human being. If you’re an excitement junkie like me, this kind of self-manipulation is especially pleasing because you never have any idea what’s really going on. The conveniently using one another grey relationship has no rules. What you and your partner share can’t be defined in the world of reality. It can only be rationalized in the smoke and mirrors emotional world that justified you using one another in the first place. You’re not exclusive, although all your friends know you’re intimately involved. You both know the relationship’s not going anywhere, but choose to mutually ignore this fact. In public you feign close friendship, in private you revel in the warped intimacy you provide each other. And this intimacy is like a spoonful of Robitussin. It’s medicine. A quick fix. There’s no danger of embarking on the frighteningly feverish ride that is real intimacy and dependency and the heinous sore throat that results from when real true love goes sour. All these heavier concerns don’t exist. You live in a seemingly safe playground with this person. You work as each other’s friendly medicine, ultimately undermining your deepest genuine wants.

This is not to say that you and your grey relationship partner can’t truly care for one another. Often times you do. And everything feels genuine at the beginning because they’re helping you fulfill your very real impulses. You get attached. Then the environment goes from grey to industrial strength fog machine, because now you’re also one another’s guilty pleasure habit. The reasons you’re even together get more blurred because now you’re just following through on preset motions. And the longer you manage to make this work, the genuine feelings that felt so throbbingly good while you were ‘getting to know each other’ subtly vanish and backfire, until you see the person across a dinner table or dance floor and realize you don’t even know them at all. How they feel about you is just as perplexing an enigma as how you truly feel about them. There’s just a huge question mark and pangs of a familiar craving.

In my experience, this progresses to the point that when you speak, you’re almost talking in code. Your initial carnal connection boils away until you’re left with a surface relationship. You talk like you’re conversing with an anonymous disgruntled stranger you’re forced into conversation with at a wedding. All the unspoken, non existent rules that generously allowed for your feelings at the beginning, now serve only to seal both of your lips shut like duck tape. No longer being able to actually communicate is an initial symptom of the grey relationship break up.

One would think that because you never fully trusted this person and were essentially using them for emotional and entertainment purposes that the grey relationship break up wouldn’t be difficult or heart wrenching. In my experience: WRONG. I’ve found grey relationship break ups to be a rare and excruciating form of hell. Because no rules were established at the beginning about how much you saw each other and how much you meant to one another, no one needs to speak up and alter these statements as is necessary in a formal relationship. Your partner is free to just subtly drift away with no required explanation. You can’t talk about it, because it’s theoretically not a ‘big deal’ that you’re going separate ways. And while rationally you don’t care, emotionally your quick fix medicine is being ominously pulled away from you. Then your ego kicks in and you begin wondering: Why does he want to change things? Why is he pulling away? Wasn’t this relationship mutually convenient for the both of us? Why now? Have I suddenly started to smell? God dammit I’m going to make this work! The sad reality is that what you’re craving to ‘make work’ never actually existed, and the only reason you want your faux relationship to endure is to avoid feeling those initial emotional holes that got you into this mess in the first place. Before, the holes were present and seeking to be filled up. Now as you move away from your grey partner, they’re actually being drained out – a really not fun feeling. Before, you had some subconscious strategies to ignore the holes. Now having embarked on your grey relationship, the holes have gotten a ton of attention. They’ve become the spoiled super brats of your emotional solar plexus. And now that your grey relationship over, you have huge red arrows pointing to the spots that you’ve long since forgotten how to ignore. Your deepest emotional shortcomings are now miserably flashing on display. And that usually doesn’t feel so hot.

The solution? Besides ice cream and bad TV I don’t have one. In my humble opinion, grey relationships should be avoided from the get-go. Sure they take your on a roller-rocket space trip where you feel totally lucky and complete for three or four months, but the crash back down to reality doesn’t always make that super human space voyage worthwhile. We’re humans; we’re supposed to feel full of holes most of the time. My current project involves just accepting that that’s normal, and trying to do the plug work myself.

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A perfect wedding does not have to have the fashion jewelry and designer watches. You can wear watches off from a second-hand store and still have a wonderful time. It is high time you throw away those binoculars.