Maybe Lifetime and the Oxygen! networks are on to something.

Human relationships are just about the most fascinating things in the world. When they turn romantic, the emotional highs and lows to which they can bring you are incomparable to anything else. You can watch a person walk into a room and have to actually consciously restrain yourself from leaping up and embracing them. You can feel slighted or hurt by them and experience that as a stab of physical pain every time you think about it.

It's amazing.

How often is it that any given thing, whether it be your job, or a book, or something you buy, or whatever, can bring you to that intensity of emotion?

As I said before, my friend Becky is going through a breakup. I don't want to take everything she and I talk about and offer it up here, because even though I may have chosen to make certain things in my life public record, she hasn't, and I want to respect that. Her situation, though, is forcing me to think in ways I haven't before. I don't think she'd mind me telling you that she bounces her thoughts off me to see what I have to say.

I'm trying so hard right now to be the best friend to her that I can be. I feel like I've come to a place a few weeks down the line where I can look back and know exactly what it was I should have done. Hindsight being what it is, of course, this is a lot of really cool wisdom that I've gained that won't help me, but I'm trying to impart it to her.

I've changed a little bit, and I know things now that I didn't know before, and I'm trying to give her the advice that I was far too stubborn to take from my own friends.

An excerpt from what I told her:

"Focus on you. This time is a gift.

If he comes back its going to be because of an internal change in him, and not anything you do. Trying to pull levers and flip switches right now can only make the situation worse - trust me.

Have patience, show restraint, rise above the situation and be better than it. Then, whatever shakes out of that is whats meant to be."

I have to admit, I'm a subscriber to that last little bit of what I said. Not that I necessarily believe that there's a grand, divine plan, but I like to think that things happen for a reason, that we're not a bunch of random proteins and goo acting out on our respective chemical levels.

Maybe I went through my recent little slice of drama so I could better help her out. Maybe she's going through hers so I can learn something, too.