This year a friend of mine was supposed to have been a bridesmaid, but the wedding was abruptly cancelled because the groom was exposed as having a dubious arrangement with a local prostitute.

A guy I know, let’s call him Mario, was seeing a guy who ghosted him after their third date. Now, Mario is no stranger to ghosting; in fact he’s never had any qualms completely ignoring anyone the second they lose his attention, myself included, so you’d think he could easily shrug it off when the tables were turned. But no.

Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. Take a deep breath, calmly collect your bitter thoughts and carefully plan out how to even those scores without resorting to random or impulsive acts of payback. But is that actually ever the case outside of fiction?

In 2022, it’s the ten-year anniversary of everyone’s favorite cynicism vehicle: Tinder. Ten long years of obsessive profile edits, numb thumbs and endless disappointment. As technology has evolved with various expensive stalker-features and misguiding face apps, so has the way people use online dating. For who really has time for small talk and organic development of a connection that might turn into a sustainable relationship?

2021 was a year of repetition – same anxieties, same restrictions, same frustrations as the year before, and for two of my friends, the same relationship problems as, well, ever. Let’s call them Maxine and Winny, and let me preface this post with a trigger warning: I will inevitably be drawing on a trope that I usually resent as the misogynistic cliché it is: The crazy ex-wife.

Shortly before COVID lockdown hit us the first time around, a friend of mine, let’s call him Emmery, had been seeing a girl who had a hard time making up her mind before finally deciding that Emmery wouldn’t be the one to loosen her bed springs.  Fast forward two months and she’s suddenly hitting him up again, so he calls me with the very valid question:  Had this woman actually had a change of heart, or was she just corona-horny?

When I hinted to the protagonist of this post that I might need to use a tiny detail about them on this blog they got quite prickly and made it clear that I was NOT to write about them under any circumstance. But come on, who doesn't want to find out how their messed up love life relates to classic literature? That's right: NO ONE.