It took me way too long to see the movie When Harry Met Sally. I am a romantic, I love easy comedy, and Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan are two of my 80’s baby favorites. Of course I loved it, and have since thought a lot about the different kinds of relationships that can occur between a man and a woman.

I had drinks with a man last night who I can’t help but care about in a borderline maternal way. I have a lot of male friends who have fallen under this nurturing gaze, partly because I work in a male-dominated profession, and partly because I don’t have children of my own. I want to listen to them, feed them, and make sure they got home safely. I have this urge to bring them under my folded wings and warm them like freshly hatched chicks in an unpredictable spring.

A lot of times, these feelings grow into something more. As you share yourself with someone, and they open up to you in turn, it’s only natural that connections begin to forge in those soft streams of vulnerability that run deeply in us all. This can either cause a fraternal relationship to turn into something almost sibling-like, or plant a bunch of what if? seeds that lead to eventual catastrophe and awkward mornings.

None of my romantic relationships have ever started this way, though. At least, none of the ones that lasted more than a month. The big loves I’ve had in my life have always been rooted first in attraction, chemistry, and that thing. Of course, these haven’t been successful either, if I’m judging by the fact that I’m still single. But when I look back at those relationships, they were the ones that cut grooves through my internal landscape, changed the trajectory of rivers inside me, moved mountains around me. They altered my entire countenance, so that I was completely unrecognizable from the person I was before them.

Certainly, friendships can have that affect, too. But it almost seems like it’s a secondary purpose to love. To tug at the fault lines within you, and break you apart.

So that, through these fissures, your beautiful insides can pour out and create a brand new surface.