Once you’ve dated a certain number of people, you may come to a point where everyone seems unimpressive. Don’t worry! This is quite normal. Humans are ordinary creatures with depressingly similar inner lives. It's not uncommon, over time, to become disappointed with your options, and to find that tangible relationships aren’t your style. If this sounds like you, you might want to try falling in love with the Idea of Someone.

The Idea of Someone is extremely adaptable. Because he or she is a concept rather than a real person, the Idea of Someone can change at a moment’s notice and be whomever you desire. Do they like your hair style? Yes. Do they support your new hobby? Yes. Do they care that you’re an inflexible asshole who is petrified of vulnerability? Nope. Not one bit.

Your Idea of Someone may be politically moderate, but slightly more left-leaning around your friends, and slightly more right-leaning around your parents. Your Idea of Someone could be a business major—no, wait, a double major in finance and philosophy? Sure, let’s go with that. They are left and right brained. Funny and kind. Unlike anyone who has previously walked the earth!

It’s natural for your Idea of Someone to be a beautifully stitched quilt of a person, a conglomeration of all the good traits from real human people you’ve dated. From your high-school relationship, you will take a slice of familiarity. The Idea of Someone will have green eyes and, on summer nights, will climb up to the rooftop of the gym with you, where you will smoke cigarettes together. You will talk about how your parents suck, and they will understand, because you’ve decided that their parents suck, too (but that you'll never spend time with their parents).

From your college partner, you will extract a love for the arts. The Idea of Someone will recite poetry to you, but not the saccharine, rhyming kind, the prose type that’s real. And, in the comfort of your double bed, in a glittering moment of intimacy, you will recite poems back to them, from memory. Finally, someone will understand you the way only an imaginary person can.

From your first adult partner, your Idea of Someone will inherit reliability and a can-do attitude. This facet of your Idea of Someone will have no trouble making and following through with plans, and will enjoy when you take the reins, too. They will offer impossibly hilarious observations about day-to-day life, the kind you will reflect on at 9:45 P.M. on a Saturday, as you smile in your leather recliner, waiting for your personal pizza to arrive, because your Idea of Someone thinks it's mature to spend some evenings just doing your own things.

Don’t get me wrong: your Idea of Someone won’t be perfect. Your first introduction might be some kind of frustratingly quirky meet-cute. In which, say, they rear-end you on the 405, and you’re pissed, like, really pissed, but when you get out of your car to assess the damage, you realize that they have the same bone structure as the actor you’ve always had a crush on, and that their voice is like a song as they make some witty remark while you exchange numbers.

Yes, the Idea of Someone will come into your life when you least expect it. And, if you’re insufferable enough to refuse to ever compromise with actual, living, breathing romantic partners, the Idea of Someone will stay with you forever. As your mind goes and your body deteriorates and you find yourself utterly alone, the Idea of Someone will comfort you, humor you even. Or maybe not? Honestly, you won’t be able to tell. It’ll be a love so big it’s never existed, and never will.