There is a joke that circulates in certain circles – cynical, reductive, and not entirely without wit – that what a man pays for in this arrangement is not the company itself, but the goodbye. That the transaction is, at its core, a clean exit. No entanglement. No obligation. She leaves, and that is the point.

I understand the joke. I simply don’t believe it tells the whole story.

Think about driving a long stretch of highway alone. The landscape shifts around you – sometimes flat and open, sometimes dense with trees – and for long stretches, you may not know exactly where you are. Then a mile marker appears at the roadside. A small, unassuming sign. It doesn’t judge where you’ve been or tell you where you’re going. It simply reflects back one honest piece of information: this is where you are, right now.

That is how I think about what we can be to one another.

When two people meet in this way – openly, with no performance required and no future to negotiate – something quietly extraordinary becomes possible. We can be completely transparent with each other. There is no need to manage impressions or protect a shared history. In that freedom, we often see ourselves more clearly than we do in the relationships we’re most invested in. You become a mirror. So do I. And what we reflect back to each other is a portrait of exactly where we both are at this particular moment in our lives.

The fact that the moment is temporary does not diminish it. A mile marker doesn’t become meaningless because you drive past it.

I will say this too: many of the men I’ve spent time with have come back. Not because of obligation or habit, but because something real was established between us — a trust, a shorthand, a genuine fondness that has grown over many encounters. These are friendships, in the truest sense of the word. We have watched each other change. We have grown, in some small way, in one another’s reflection.

So yes – there is always a goodbye. But between the hello and the goodbye, there is presence. There is honesty. There is, if you’re willing to receive it, a remarkably clear view of yourself.

That, to me, is worth far more than a clean exit.

– Sydney