Human relationships require so much maintenance and care, you're forced to ask yourself why this should be so. If they were sporty foreign cars, know-it-alls on the sidewalk would cross their arms and murmur "He loves it now, wait til it's in the shop a few times". Think of the Consumer Reports rating! Worse than a Yugo, surely.

Clearly one of the big contributing factors is the tendency for people to be insecure and anxious about their standing with each other. They need constant cooing reassurances that yes, you still like them, and no, you're not growing apart, and no, nothing's changed so please stop worrying before I get fed up and stop liking you and keep my distance from your clingy needy self. I think deep down everyone assumes that life is a lot like Hollywood: there is no status quo, there is no restful plateau, you're either moving up or moving down. Moving up in someone's estimation, occupying an increasingly large and more prominent place in someone's heart and thoughts (nudging aside less worthy claimants, natch), is exhilarating and life-affirming. Moving down is spiritually crushing, like the grim descent to hell, the Hell of the Rejected and Dismissed. You feel the relationship slipping away, you grasp and clutch, the hysteria of your need revealing at last the depths of your psychosis, your twisted infantile psychosis, which of course only hastens their horrified retreat.

Most of us, as we get older, learn that this kind of behavior is not only frowned upon but deeply embarrassing. Do we outgrow it? Learn somehow to refrain from letting ourselves slip into that abject state? No, in fact those emotional impulses and reactions never go away, instead we learn ever more sophisticated ways of masking and hiding such weaknesses. Being a grownup is knowing how to successfully hide your more grotesque baby feelings.