I am addicted to him.

“I regret him like the jelly donut I had his morning. Both left me feeling not so great about my decisions but were totally delicious going down.”

I’m never sure if it’s his charisma and charm or his humor and unpredictability, but I cannot get enough of him. He is wit and smarts and sex and familiarity — and if there is a more appealing combination of man-ness, I haven’t found it. The scent of him turns me on, but it’s his brains keep me coming back. 

I am drawn to him like that moment before a magnet makes a really satisfying thwack as it meets your refrigerator door. It’s inevitable, but the feeling is still so satisfying when you hear the feel the bond. Like a monarch butterfly considering where to overwinter, I might think about going elsewhere, but his southwestern Mexico is just where I’m going to end up because it’s my version of true north — you know? It’s more than lust. More than the physical attraction. 

Is that worse — or better? 

Is it the palpable charisma and charm or the well-matched wit and unpredictability I’m hooked on? He surprises me with little affectionate displays like grabbing my ass in the aisles at The Container Store where I am sure everyone notices (nobody really ever seems to in reality), and I blush furiously. His second favorite thing in life seems to be to make me blush. The pink creeps up my cheeks and warms my face at least five degrees. They say blushing is good for your skin. 

He’s better than any facial. 

Having never been someone who thought of myself as particularly sexy, I am consistently surprised when men tell me they see me that way. I think they know this. I think they tell one another it’s the way into a smart girl’s knickers. Like some sort of beacons of Gondor, they all let the others know the secret way into our Mines. 

Like when the brainy girl takes off her glasses and shakes out her hair in the movie, I have always felt that I require some level of metamorphosis to feel like I’m the sexy one in the room. And I am 100% certain that the appeal of being seen that way in my natural state clouds my judgment. Fogs up my glasses, if you will. 

But I do not use the term addiction lightly: There’s one definition that describes the syndrome as “a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, and memory.” I am motivated by the reward center of my brain to continue to interact with him. My mind remembers how good it can be, and needles me to return for more. 

For us, that reward has been about more than physical. He gets me. He keeps up with me — beyond sexy in my eyes — and he is stimulated by my smarts and humor as much as the rest of me. As his reward, he gets to see the most real version of me. But he has disappointed me. Has been a ghost when I needed him to be present. Has left me feeling empty. 

Every couple of months, I talk myself out of seeing him again. Out of pining for him. It lasts... not very long. Even when he is thousands of miles away. I tell myself that my feelings for him aren’t helping me, and that I see no real future for us that’s any different than the now version. Do I want them to be different, I ask? I answer that I need to find something more real and move on. That I need to turn those emotions off like some affection faucet. 

As of today, anyway, that has proven impossible and this particular faucet is still on a slow drip.