A couple of years ago, I asked myself a near-rhetorical question. Did I know any couples, married or not, who had been together five years, and were satisfied with their relationship? Not only did I come up blank for people I know now, but I could not recall ever meeting a couple who fit the criteria. I'm 45 years old, and I've come to the conclusion that long-term happiness in a romantic relationship is a kind of collective hallucination. We like to think that it exists somewhere, even though we've never encountered it. The simple truth is, in matters of the heart, humans are fucked.