I like him. He doesn’t like me. He likes me. I don’t like him. And so, it goes back and forth.

This seems to be a reoccurring issue in a lot of relationships, including my own. I’m not sure if there has been a study, but I would love to know why any time a guy seems a little uninterested, I’m sure he is the perfect man for me and my mission becomes to make him fall head over heels for me. However, the moment he falls, my next mission seems to become finding the next person to topple head over heels.

It’s an old tale of course; we want what we can’t have. However, I would hope I was much smarter than this. But it appears I’m not alone in the confusion.

A recent example came after my friend called it off with her boyfriend. She was dating a guy that for a year just didn’t seem to care about her as much as she cared for him. While she worried about his needs and happiness, he also worried about his own needs and happiness. She cried, pleaded and waited for him to do the same for her. But alas, he just “couldn’t give her what she wanted.” Finally, she mustered up enough self-respect to break it off.

One month later, he can’t seem to quit calling her. In fact, it seems most of his free time is spent wondering where the relationship went wrong, and whether they ever get back together.

So, the question is what changed? Well, in my girlfriend’s case, nothing actually changed. She left him for a reason. He didn’t have the same goals as her in life. And while for a long time she hoped she could change that, she soon realized it just wasn’t meant to be. She dealt with it and moved on. Unfortunately, her ex had been too self-absorbed to do the same.

I think we tend to instinctively know what we want in a mate, but our egos can be adangerous nemesis. The idea of someone who once adored us moving on can get emotions twisted and convince us we might have lost the best thing that ever happened to us (and of course, that might have been exactly what happened).

Singletons, a look at single life by WFAA.com staffer Marjorie Owens, appears Fridays.   E-mail o8sis