I finally arrive at work after an arduous, 75-minute commute. After taking off my winter coat, scarf, hat, and gloves, I refill my tea. Settling in at my desk, I pull out my laptop and log in to the network. First, I check my schedule and see that I have back-to-back meetings for most of the day — ugh. I see an email from my boss. He needs information for a quarterly business review. The email has a red exclamation point, marking it as urgent. I start to respond, but then I remember an even more pressing matter that needs to be addressed.

I open up my spreadsheet. Each row represents every day I have seen my boyfriend — ever. It goes back to before we were even dating, when we would meet for coffee after a yoga class. I saw my boyfriend last night, so I put an “X” in the column next to today’s date. We had sex, so the next cell gets three Xs. If we merely kissed, I would have entered two. One X means that we saw each other, but there was no physical interaction. Luckily, this doesn’t happen often. In the activity column, I select what we did from the dropdown. For example: dinner, a walk, a yoga class, etc. I created a dropdown so I could sort it all later — freeform text is not great for data analysis. However, there is a notes column where I can add any concerns I had about our interaction.

My therapist tells me that this tracking behavior is a sign of relationship OCD and not very healthy. She suggests I stop. While I tend to agree regarding the health of this habit, it seems like a shame to stop now — there is so much data; surely, it has some useful purpose. Now, I can calculate trends: Do we see each other more or less? Are we having sex more or less often? What days of the week do I see him most? I could create my own quarterly review for our relationship, tracking its health with a color-coded system. I could share it with my boyfriend so we could talk through strengths and opportunities. We could always be aware of the well-being of our relationship, at any given time. I think it’s genius. If I had more time, I would create a relationship analysis app.

That was my morning ritual for the first year of my relationship with my boyfriend. I was often wracked with anxiety, trying to figure out where things were headed and attempting to assure myself that the relationship was healthy. Ironically, I also realized that tracking each interaction was very unhealthy behavior. Despite the positive trends, my data showed me, I continued to feel anxious and uncertain about where we stood. I was looking for quantitative evidence that everything was going to be okay or, more specifically, that I would be okay. Of course, when it comes to relationships, there are no guarantees.

No one wants to be another’s life raft anchored to a mooring.

Let’s consider more data. We know that about half of all marriages in the West end in divorce. It almost seems suspect that any rational human would choose to get married, knowing it was a coin toss as to whether they would stay together or need to embark on a costly and mentally arduous legal process to divide assets and children. The odds just aren’t very good. Moreover, we don’t even know if the remaining 50% are happy. Yet, despite the data, many of us continue to get married or form long-term partnerships.

We have a primal desire to connect with others and be accepted. We are designed to pass our DNA to the next generation, so our species continues to survive. We are born to connect and procreate. That’s likely why we sometimes feel that we need a partner to survive — it’s in our biology. My spreadsheet was an attempt to confirm my likelihood of survival.

Luckily, our survival is no longer a threat and should not be a factor when considering or maintaining a relationship. In fact, going into a relationship with a life-or-death attitude is not an effective strategy for building a healthy, interdependent partnership, where both individuals have space to grow and evolve. It’s a recipe for codependency and resentment. No one wants to be another’s life raft anchored to a mooring.

Based on my behavior — and what I hear from others — it appears we could be overcomplicating our relationships. What if instead of approaching relationships as dire endeavors, we approached them with playfulness, grace, and curiosity? Rather than looking for evidence that it will be a success, or for red flags indicating that we should jump ship, we look instead to how we feel in the present moment? We could ask ourselves questions like:

• Do I enjoy spending time with this person?
• Do they make me want to be better?
• Are we honest with each other?
• Do we have each other’s best interests in mind?

Since we can’t predict the future, these questions would at least give us an indication of the quality of our relationship right now.

Past trends are not indicative of future performance.

Instead of treating our relationships like a game of Battleship, where we keep our agendas hidden as we wait for our partner to make one wrong move, we can act more like we’re playing Candy Land. We move forward with enthusiasm, even as we know there’s a chance we may have to go back to the start. We don’t know how the cards are shuffled. It’s not a huge surprise when we encounter detours — and yet, we still enjoy the game. There is an energy of playfulness.