Moving to Los Angeles ten years ago hit me like a nuclear bomb. I had just been through my first round with Alcoholic Ex-Boyfriend (for those who have been reading and are familiar with my lore) and had lost all hope in dating, so I did what every girl who doesn’t want to date does—I dated.

Nuclear Softboy and I met on Tinder (it was 2016). We talked about God and his banjo and go on long walks to different bookstores all over the city. He was having an existential crisis unbecoming of a man in his early thirties, and I was trying to forget that I had let a different man throw a glass of wine at me—or at least in my direction—one month earlier. Neither of us could give each other much, but we tried to negotiate the best from one another.

A negotiation doesn’t mean both parties magically get what they want. It usually means both parties cede ground until both are equally unhappy. In 2015, just a year before I met Softboy, the US (and the UK, France, Germany, China, Russia, and the EU) signed what became known as the Iran Deal. Some praised it. Some said Obama had sold the US and Israel to Iran. The idea was never to make the Islamic Regime suddenly good; it was to create a long-term incentive by allowing it to reenter the global economy. Not a friendship, but a potential future handshake.

We dated for roughly two months. I met his brother (who would go on to ask me out years later. That’s another story). I saw his struggling stand-up routine. I made him breakfast. He met my friends. It wasn’t serious; it was an ambiguous agreement. Then he texted me one day to........

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