During college, I spent a few wonderful evenings making out with a longhaired poet. I spent a few weeks messing around with a gentle, funny religion student. I even briefly, if accidentally, dated a high school student (since when do 17-year-olds have beards?).

This is what you do in college. No longer tethered to childhood routines and unburdened by the judgments and prejudices of people who know you best, you explore and experiment, sampling new ideologies, new points of view. New people.

So I sampled, freely and happily. But my situation was different from most: I also had a serious boyfriend at the time. Serious, as in we lived together. We owned two cats together. I wasn’t breaking any rules, however. We had an open relationship.

It was a complete disaster.

My boyfriend and I met in Introduction to Philosophy. He was dark-haired, charming and endearingly weird, one of those passionate, articulate boys who live life in superlatives. The music he listened to was the best of all possible music. The books he read stood at the pinnacle of literature. He himself was going to be the greatest philosopher of his generation.