Because you’re bored. Because you’re horny. Because you caught a glimpse of one of those pop-up ads and you can’t get the image out of your head. Reasons to masturbate? Because it’s Wednesday.

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“I think the barista fancies me,” he explained as we wandered towards the coffee shop. “She’s quite flirty, you know?”

Yeah. I know. I know a million guys who are convinced that the barista in their regular coffee shop fancies them. They pop in of a morning, freshly showered and ready for work, and order their usual from someone who knows how to make it. That loving ritual of giving and receiving hot drink adds an extra tinge of flirtiness to an otherwise mundane transaction. A simple ‘how are you?’ can be transformed into a declaration of playful lust.

“No, she doesn’t fancy you,” I told him, twattishly. “Everyone thinks the barista is flirting with them – they teach them how to do it in barista school.”

“Yeah,” a twitch of something that looks like relief on his face. “You’re probably right.”

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I’ve always hated the phrase ‘my other half’ – it implies a lack of completeness about me. That I, on my own, am never quite full or rounded. Not quite enough.

I hate ‘him indoors,’ which implies the kind of comfortable, settled domesticity that I’ve never really felt with anyone.

I’m ambivalent about ‘boyfriend’ and ‘partner’ feels too grown up.

I panic at the thought of a ‘husband.’

‘Boy’ is becoming tired, and not a natural descriptor for someone in their 30s.

Says ‘girl’ on the net. At the age of 30.

‘Mate’ is either too pally or too like an Attenborough documentary, depending on how you interpret it.

‘Lover’ makes me cringe.

Some days he’s my guy, my dude. That dickhead. And often he’s a twat.

But maybe my obsession with the lack of a proper word belies what the actual problem is with any of these statements: the ‘my’ that comes at the front of them.

No one is ever mine, of course.

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