My friends don't know this, but sometimes I have an internal competition to see who has the better relationship. It's my secret vice, frivolously analyzing where my boyfriend and I are better and where we're worse, compared to everyone else. I'd like to say it's my way of taking the pulse of my relationship, of knowing what works and what doesn'tAlthough it really seems more like a reflex, an involuntary tic driven by the need for immediate gratification. A form of entertainment. And I'm sure we're not alone. Comparing ourselves is one of the things that makes us most human. Nothing makes us as fragile and rational as believing ourselves to be better or worse than someone else. We constitute ourselves in this exercise, in relation to others. Otherness ultimately defines us. That's why we need to understand it thoroughly.