Opening the door to my hotel room in Mexico City, I immediately inhaled the sweet, masculine scent of the man to whom I had just given a friendly kiss good-bye.

‘It’s remarkable how quickly a stranger can become familiar,’ I thought.

When I ended things with Andrew, I wondered if my relationship with him — significant as it was — would change me. Would knowing how great sex with someone I love can be at its best make me more hesitant to settle for something less?

But, not even three months after my break-up, I found myself back in familiar territory: lying next to someone I liked but didn’t love, sharing an experience that was not exactly meaningless but could not be described as meaningful.

After nearly two years of monogamy, it was positively delicious to discover the taste, the feel, the rhythm of someone new. All of the excitement and enthusiasm that had faded months before for the man I loved, returned easily for a man I barely knew. Over the course of a few days, we spent a lot of time together, this Mexican boy and me. And, in so many ways, I felt like the best of myself with him: kind, caring, open and full of desire. Things I had not been with Andrew for some time.

The truth is, I find casual relationships immensely more comfortable than serious ones. When there is no expectation of commitment, there is nothing to fear: not rejection, not the loss of freedom, nor the loss of yourself. Because I did not expect anything from him, I felt free to give him as much of myself as I wanted. I didn’t have to play games, to make sure he was as ‘into’ me as I was into him, to make him want me more by withholding what I had to offer; I could just be his friend. It is truly liberating, to do exactly what you feel like doing, to enjoy someone in whatever way you’d like, for however long you’d like.

It’s liberating, but it’s also limiting. Because love cannot exist without vulnerability, and it is the absence of vulnerability that allows you to give as much of yourself as you want without fearing that you will not get the same in return.

Walking into my room, I logged onto my computer to see an unread mail from Andrew — the first communication since the very last. The coldness I felt at seeing his name stood in stark contrast to warmth I felt with my more recent lover’s scent still all around me. How strange that the man who offered me everything I said I wanted could leave me so empty. How sad, in a way, that love was not enough to bring out the best in me.

We spend so much of our lives trying to discover — and to accept — who we are. I wonder if the larger struggle is not trying to reconcile who we are with what we want.

For my part, I know this for sure: I like myself best when I am not playing games. And while they are undoubtedly effective in helping to secure the affections of a man, ultimately the score keeping is destructive. I want love in my life, but I also know that I have often been a better friend than I have a girlfriend. Maybe, for me, friendship is where love will have to start to have any hope of lasting.