Having two best friends who didn’t believe in true love had sometimes been a pain in the ass, especially since I’d been living in monogamous, sex-with-one-person-for-the-rest-of-my-life bliss.

I’d been one of the lucky ones. I found the love of my life early, and was determined to hold on to him with both hands. The day Stefan proposed was the best day of my life. I hadn’t thought it possible to be any happier than I already was.

I had the perfect ring, the perfect dress, the perfect flowers. I had the perfect fiancé, and I was going to have the perfect wedding.

Everything was just. Fucking. Perfect.

Until it wasn’t.

See, that so-called love of my life? Well, it turned out I was the only one in our relationship who felt that way. Unfortunately, the inconsiderate son of a bitch hadn’t had the courtesy to give me a heads-up that he’d changed his mind about the whole ‘until death do us part’ thing.

I could have been spared so much humiliation if he’d just manned up and said, “Sorry, Daph, darling, but I’ve had a change of heart. I’ve decided that loving you through sickness and health is just too much stress to put on one man.”

Oh no. Instead, he decided to take the chickenshit route and keep quiet about the whole ordeal. I don’t know what he intended to do once our wedding day finally arrived, but if it hadn’t been for the fact that I walked in on him and my mother in bed together, I probably never would have known he’d been cheating.

And yes, I said my mother! My own flesh and blood, the loins of my fruit, was sleeping with my fiancé.

I’d been living on cloud nine, totally oblivious that the two people who meant the most to me had turned me into a complete laughingstock. Not only had they been carrying on their affair right under my nose, but, with the exception of Lola and Sophia, most everyone in my social circle already knew about it.

Apparently, unless one of the three of us was around, they hadn’t taken great strides in hiding what they were doing.

I grew up knowing my mom was different from all the other mothers I saw dropping their kids off at school. She dressed and acted younger than her age, and after divorcing my father when I was little, my mother had one boyfriend after another, none of them coming even remotely close to her age. She acted more like my best friend than a parent, and for the longest time I thought that was cool. I considered myself lucky that I had a mom who’d let me stay up late, eat junk food, and watch movies most of my classmates weren’t allowed to see yet. But the older I got, the more I started to realize that it wasn’t just her being laid-back and lenient. No, turned out she just didn’t care all that much to be a parent.

Once I hit my late teens, things turned into a competition with her. It was all about who was skinnier, who had the best clothes, the best hair. She even tried turning relationships into a competition, whose boyfriend was hotter. It was absolutely ridiculous, and I tried my hardest not to engage.

Obviously, that didn’t matter. Finding her with Stefan made things completely clear—she was going to take what was mine no matter what.

It was fun finding out the man I was planning on spending the rest of my life with had been banging my own flesh and blood for well over a year and that they’d decided to go and fall in love with each other. And by fun, I meant it felt like a million white-hot needles piercing my eyeballs.

Needless to say, I crumbled into a billion pieces. I was inconsolable, a total fucking mess. After locking myself in my apartment and living in the wedding dress I’d never get the chance to wear in public for a solid week, my girls staged an intervention.

It couldn’t have come soon enough. I looked like the Bride of Frankenstein by the end of day six. My hair was a greasy, stringy mess. I hadn’t washed or moisturized any part of my body in far too long. I had pizza sauce and chocolate syrup—that I’d sucked straight from the bottle because I was classy like that—splattered all over my gown.

It was a sight to see. A horrifying one.

Luckily, I had the best friends in the whole entire world, and they were able to kick my ass out of my misery.

It was thanks to them that I was able to get my shit straight and pull my life back together. But the damage from that day had already been done.

I had been forced to learn the ugly truth, that happily-ever-afters were bullshit created by greeting card companies and the Lifetime Movie Network to give women a false sense of hope.

True love didn’t exist.

Well, maybe it did, but not without consequences. And I’d been bitten by that particularly poisonous snake once already. I wasn’t about to let it strike again.

I gave up on finding Mr. Right and started concentrating on finding Mr. Right Now. And I spent the following years teaching other women to do the same. You know, if that was the direction they were already leaning toward.

I wasn’t bitter. I was resigned. I built a life that didn’t revolve around finding a man, and it was a damn good one.

After my failed first attempt at jumping on the marriage bandwagon, I’d officially joined my friends in the All Guys Are Assholes club, and I was totally content to stay there.

After all, once burned, twice shy, right?

No way in hell I was ever going down that road again.