Why Do Cheesy Nicknames For Boyfriends Strengthen Relationships?

After my sister stole my boyfriend 11 times, I decided to take action. I went out and found myself a fool to date, just to see if she'd still try to take him away. But I never expected that one day, my "foolish" boyfriend would stop being so dumb. In fact, he became a scoundrel.

He almost never texts me first, and in person he barely says a word. In three years together, he's never remembered a single anniversary, and he's never once suggested we celebrate a holiday. But the second I message him first, he lights up, all "baby" this and "baby" that, fussing over me, coaxing me to sleep. Sometimes I'd get this strange feeling that there were two different Noahs. His explanation was that he was just bad with words face-to-face, and that texting or voice notes felt like less pressure. I kept telling myself that being together meant meeting each other halfway. He was quiet and reserved, so I'd be the one to reach out. He forgot anniversaries, so I booked the restaurant and reminded him to keep the night free. He had no time to schedule our engagement shoot, so I handled the whole thing with the studio myself. He was too busy with work to help us move, so I packed everything alone, booked the movers, and got it all done. When I was so worn out I was about to break, I'd send him a voice note, and he'd say, "I'm so sorry, baby. The lab was insane today. I couldn't be there for you, and it kills me to watch you run yourself into the ground." Hearing how guilty he sounded, all my hurt just melted away. And that's how I carried three years of this relationship on my own, running on the flawless tenderness he only ever gave me online. Until today, when I found a program on his laptop called Boyfriend Assistant. It analyzed every message I sent and generated the perfect reply, the perfect response, every single time. Cold snap? It sent: Bundle up, baby. Time of the month? It pinged an API and auto-ordered hot chocolate to my door. All those late nights he spent "working," the gentle voice notes that lulled me to sleep, every one of them was synthesized in Noah's voice. For three years, the person who'd been there for me, day and night, was never Noah at all. For three years, I'd been performing a one-woman show.

At my wedding, a video of my fiancé cheating was exposed. I didn't make a scene; just turned around and walked away, left him to clean up the mess himself. I went back to my room and kissed my younger boyfriend. We were halfway through when we got interrupted. My fiancé stormed in, face red with shame and rage. "Is this really the time? All you can think about is kissing?" I smacked my lips, still savoring the moment. "Weren't you the one who introduced us?"

My boyfriend goes viral after uploading a video of him being lovey-dovey with a woman. Everyone praises him for being handsome and a good boyfriend, but I don't even have the courage to like the video. Why? Because the woman in the video isn't me.

My boyfriend's assistant, who also came from the same university as him but a lower grade, has an incredibly similar name to mine. While mine is Marissa Parker, hers is Melissa Barker. At the party our colleagues are throwing to celebrate the end of my unmarried life with my boyfriend, Liam Yarrow, Melissa once again mixes up our names. Everyone is cheering and joking around as they unfurl the banner they had prepared, and one person reads the wording out loud. "Congratulations to Liam Yarrow and Melissa Barker! May you two be happy and blissful forever!" In an instant, the originally noisy room falls silent. Melissa's timid voice then rings out. "Sorry, Marissa. I accidentally made a mistake again." Instead of answering, I turn to look at Liam. Liam's brow doesn't even wrinkle in the slightest as he subconsciously assures her, "It's just a minor matter. She won't mind." Following that, he gets up, walks to Melissa, and stops in front of her, placing me opposite him. With this action, his figure completely blocks her from my sight, and like many times before, he shoots me a warning look. "Marissa, it's just a banner. Mel didn't mean to mess it up. At the end of the day, everyone already knows that you and I are the stars tonight, so don't dwell on this, okay?" He calls me by my full first name, while Melissa gets an affectionate nickname. Can his feelings be any more obvious? I slowly release my grip on the balloon I was holding. "Alright, I won't." I will never dwell on anything to do with him again.

My boyfriend gave me away to his arch-nemesis because he lost a bet. On the same night, I was driven to his arch-nemesis’ house. Before leaving, he expressed remorse, “Anya, just bear with it for a bit. I will come to pick you up in a month.” That night, the man pinned me to the bed and started unbuttoning my shirt. As he traced his cold fingertips against my collarbone, he said, deep and seductively, “So that’s the scumbag you fell for? Why don’t you be with me instead? I can give you everything you want.” I leaned forward and kissed him right away. “Sure.”