For almost a year, I genuinely thought I had cracked the code on being a good boyfriend. Turns out the code I'd cracked was just "pay no attention whatsoever and call it trust."

Ananya and I were eleven months in — the comfortable stretch, where you stop performing and start actually living next to someone. We had our takeout order, our side of the bed, our specific brand of arguing about which show to start that always ended with neither of us watching anything. So when she began going "out with the girls" every single weekend, I didn't blink. Not once. I'm not the jealous type, and I wore that like a medal. I'd text her *have fun, drive safe, love you,* and mean every word, and she'd float home on Sunday evening smelling faintly of a bar I'd never been to, full of stories about friends I was apparently never free to meet.