"As soon as my friends and I start dating for real, we enter an exhausting paradox - a belief that, in love, everything is not as it seems: the conviction that there is a common state of affairs whereby a man can be madly in love with you and wish to spend the rest of his life with you, but will indicate this in a variety of ways so subtle, only the truly talented and determined will discern his true desires. Like it's The Da Vinci Code, and when a man takes you out to dinner, gets off with you, then doesn't call for two weeks, there's a secret challenge he's setting you that - with enough algebra, consultation of ancient scrolls, and wailing on the phone to your female friends - you can decode and, eventually, get married, i.e., win... .You can always tell when a woman is with the wrong man, because she has so much to say about the fact that nothing's happening. When women find the right person, on the other hand, they just... disappear for six months, and then resurface, eyes shiny, and usually about six pounds heavier. "So what's he like?" you will say, waiting for the usual cloudburst of things he says and things he does and requests of analysis of what you think it means that his favorite film is Star Wars ("Trapped in adolescence - or in touch with his inner child?"). But she will be oddly quiet. "It's just... good," she will say. "I'm really happy."