M: “Oh no, you haven’t heard the best yet.”

I gasped in awe, “There’s more? Where does he get off…”

M: “When she grabbed him he smiled that,” she scrunched her face in disgust recounting all the times she’s seen him do it and blown it off due to her own insecurity.

J: “Yeah, I’ve seen that crooked smile.”

Mel and I have followed one another through our career path networking our contacts. We were sitting at our monthly lunch trading contacts and discussing our most recent relationship blunders.

Mel is tall and angular, studiously stylish, and naturally gorgeous. She’s the type of girl one is alternately jealous of and shocked by. She’s genuinely kind and captivatingly attractive but insists on continuously stumbling into poor choices of the romantic persuasion. And occasionally, the purely physical bad decisions. Her men must be tall, preppy, jocks, the eternal fraternity boy of the unfaithful blend. There’s plenty of this blend trolling around in Houston. Her latest had been injured while playing basketball. The petite blonde who tended to him in the emergency room was later seen cuddled in his arms in a bar that very evening.

Her ego was shattered once again, “Wasn’t I the one to play nurse?”

J: “She’s got a degree in it. You’re already at a disadvantage. Good riddance to that jack ass.”

I on the other hand continue to play tug of war, “Like Kendra told me, when you send something out; you expect a message in return. When the message isn’t returned I’ve got one of two options. Call bull shit and walk or sit and pine.”

“I know where this is headed.”

“With mud in my face?”

We’ve all made mistakes that are impossible to undo, but what if you did everything right the first time? In today’s Sex & the City Dating Space if you don’t fall flat on your face, have your heart torn in two and spit back at you; you’re bound to end up scrolling through dates like a rolodex. The only serial daters not making mistakes are the one’s who jump into each new relation with little risk and nothing to lose. Ah. Yes. Them. They’re the one’s not growing. If we continually move through life like a herd of cattle following the same path over and over listening to our gut with each new encounter, we’re stagnant. Mud becomes a temporary tattoo that simply won’t rub off leaving one to question how the hell did I wind up here? Again. Again. All the accessories, shoes, and clothes to boot the Galleria has to offer won’t disclose the growth process unless you take a break and understand what went wrong.

James Joyce said it poetically, “Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”