Previously, I told chief MR Bonnie Kaye that Andy and I lacked passion, and that sometimes we felt more like friends than lovers. This seemed like a minor complaint, but I still felt sick awaiting the results of his reading. What if she agreed with me? What if we were really... just friends?

"It's a good relationship," she tells me after the reading. "It's meeting both of your needs, you've been through a lot together, tried other people out ... It's working. For now."

The ominous for now punctuation unnerved me. You've got a job, for now. The herpes is under control, for now. The El is safe and terrorist-free, for now.

"Your love is one of comfort and companionship," she continued. "You're best friends, and a good friendship is the basis of any good relationship. [But] being best friends is not enough. Settling is equivalent to existing."

If settling means existing and existing means not trying and not trying means failure, then I've already failed at 24, condemned to a life of AbFab reruns and wondering what if and asking out loud to no one in particular (because, remember, I'm wretched and alone, a modern-day Miss Havisham, Jackie from Roseanne, Dr. Phil's worst nightmare), for Christ's sake, why do the cats keep peeing on the sofa bed?

Is this what Best Friend Syndrome is all about?

The theory behind BFS is that one partner stays with the other because 1) they're comfortable, and 2) they care deeply for their partner and don't want to hurt his or her feelings. Kaye disapproves of this sort of compliancy, and thinks women who stay in low-sex or sexless relationships with so-called "best friends" are deluding themselves.

"Without sex, there is no perfect couple," she writes in her book, ManReaders: A Woman's Guide to Dysfunctional Men. "Sex is part of the foundation of having a healthy relationship. It is not the icing on the cake, it is the cake."

As I crank up the self-pity, I'm struck by an altogether different what if. What if she's wrong?

I ask my mom, married 30 years, for her take on BFS.

"Daddy and I don't and never have had a passionate relationship," she says. "[But] we have a deep, binding love that weathers just about anything. I'll always wonder if there was someone out there that could have been the perfect mate, if such a thing exists, but I also could have spent my life looking and never found them. Then where would I be?"

This makes sense to me. I've got a guy who treats me like gold — why would I risk that for something intangible, an elusive other, a maybe?

I don't want the burden and exhaustion of dating. I don't want to excuse my eccentricities, or explain why I work weekends, or give the runaround when some guy wants to get it on and I want to go to sleep.

With Andy, I don't have to. He has already accepted those eccentricities. We make a party out of ordering Thai and working all night. And should I ever fall asleep during sex, he'll put me to bed with nary a complaint. These are things you don't get when you're holding out for happily ever after.

I can live with that. For now.

Questions? Comments? Got BFS with your BFF? E-mail ashlea.halpern@citypaper.net. No phone calls.