Eye contact.

Heart pounding, faster...

The walk across the room, smiling coyly at one another, hey what's up, blindly typing cell phone numbers onto small keypads and hoping he remembers all this tomorrow.

The first date is next: dinner at Chili's and a movie because we're broke and laughably cliché, reaching for my hand and pulling away because it's sweaty, I'm sorry, I'm nervous.

Months later, and pairs of stolen sweatpants later, it's over, because he's jealous or I'm jealous, I've cheated, he wants space, or probably because it's my fault...it's not you or anything you did, I swear.

The progression of a relationship. And on and on and on.

The Carpenters said it best: "Breaking up is hard to do."

The seemingly endless cycle of dating and breaking up is emotionally exhausting.

After we break up with someone, do we forget all the pain that came from cutting those ties when we meet someone new?

It makes me wonder why we blindly enter new relationships so soon after suffering through the symptoms of broken attachment.

In most dating situations, pain is temporary.

After the initial heartbreak, after feeling like I'm never going to meet somebody quite like him, after swearing off men and anything that reminds me of men, the pain dulls.

I resolve to hate him because that, miraculously, eases some of the sting.

So months later, after brushing off the dirt from the last relationship, I take a deep breath and the cycle starts over.

Meeting and greeting, wining and dining, dating and, eventually...hating.

Going into it, we are just ignoring the fact that the relationship is going to end, probably badly.

There will be the excess baggage, the pictures that can't be in frames by my bed anymore, the cards, his friends who are now your ex-friends, by default. And music, whether it's the cds he made or awkward silences on his end of the line.

There are alternatives. Since my first heartbreak, I've tried to stay faithful to my policy of never getting too involved.

Because, as my pitying friends once told me, if you aren't too involved, you can't really lose. And just play it, and play them -- like a game.

Beware: This only works for a limited time.

There is a limit on the amount of dating around a person can do.

Eventually, I come around to realizing that not only do I feel guilty for having so many tiny, scattered relationships, but the only way to truly enjoy something is to share it with someone else.

And when you have someone worthy of being your "something else" the relationship starts to circle overhead like a vulture.

And I'm hooked, because love is addicting to anybody.

And breakups are painful, but -- like ripping off a band-aid -- forgettable.

By accepting a role in a relationship, we are throwing ourselves into the ring of vulnerability.

But we'll never stop.

Because no matter how much it hurts at the end, it's fleeting.

And we always need the beginning to remind us of what we live for.

And also because, let's face it, the only way to completely get over an ex is to find someone new.

Until we meet "the one" (which follows with, dare-I-say, the "m" word) all our relationships are made to be broken.

So we siphon what we need at the time from our significant others, say we'll learn from our mistakes, redefine what we "really want" and move on.

All of us are just chasing our tails.