The sun was just beginning to die over downtown when I began having a heated argument with a drunk friend who recently had his heart broken. On this day, he had me beat by about five Michelob Ultras because, coming off of jaw surgery, I was the only one who couldn’t drink, and he could not for the life of him stop telling me and the rest of our group that love wasn’t real.

Maybe it was my dazed state, but I agreed with him. I've been in so many bad relationships by now, I can't count them on my fingers and toes. (So guys, let's face it... Relationships are a roll of the dice.)

I seemingly came to right as the sun was setting, and I metaphorically slapped the hell out of my friend with some knowledge. Relationships are very real. They can be fleeting, but they are real.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: no one really ever wants to “go out”. It’s a hassle, a strain, and a pain in the ass to get dressed up and pretend you enjoy mingling with people you only know on a very superficial level. It takes a special kind of person to really to be on all the time and, thus, enjoy stuff like going out.

Once you hit a certain age, anyone who isn’t in a monogamous relationship goes out on a Friday night with one thing in mind... Relationships. We’re all looking for them. Most single people you talk to won’t admit that, but it’s the truth. You can say you just want to go out with your friends and not think for a few hours, but deep down, you know if the opportunity for a meaningful relationship presented itself, you would jump at the chance. (Hell, we all would.)

Why were we put here on Planet Earth? Well, I want to believe it’s to be happy. We’re all chasing what makes us happy, or what we think will make us happy, and many of you already found what, or who, makes you happy.

Some of you think you found it, but the majority of us, myself included, are simply walking around with a blindfold hoping we’ll just bump into it.

A lot of people claim they aren’t looking for a relationship, and that’s true at a certain age. They may not be looking for someone at the time of that statement, but eventually, everyone gets sick of the Friday-night-get-dressed-and-go-out game.

We all talked that talk. “I wouldn’t want a girlfriend/boyfriend, even if I could get one.” At 21, 22, 23 – hell, at 25 – I found myself saying that exact phrase.

However, being single is a game we all willingly play because, eventually, we want it to end. Our brains all tell us at a certain point we can no longer play that game. We just don’t know when that’s going to be. Some of us are told at 18, and some of us are told at 40. We’re all going to be told at some point because we all get fed up with playing the children’s game and just want out of the vicious cycle.

Honestly though, nobody bat’s a thousand. Not in baseball, and certainly not in relationships. Think about all of the drunken Friday nights you put together since you were able to get into a bar, nightclub, or house party willing to serve you alcohol... What’s your success rate look like?

I’m willing to bet it’s less than five percent, and I bet mine is less than that 5% I just quoted you.

I don’t mean success as some blanket term for bringing somebody home. I mean, how many people you met on a Friday night out you actually care about. That you said, "Hey, I really like that girl or guy." In my time going out on the weekends, I put that number at 1%. That’s how many people I met in about 10 years.

There isn’t a person alive who wants to be single forever because I don't think that's how we're hardwired.

You may not want something serious this coming Friday night, but everyone, at the very least, looks for a decent conversation (or maybe you want to keep the other side of the bed from freezing over). We want something to make waking up less of a chore. We want companionship, and can you really blame someone for wanting to get close to another human being?

Our brains are bound in such a way that when everything goes well, it feels right. If aliens were to ever touch down on this planet and ask me that formidable, mother-of-all existential questions – “Why are you here?”– I know exactly what I would say. I was put here to find who and what makes me happy.

Is this what you wanted to read about on a Monday night coming out of Easter weekend with your friends and family? Probably not. I didn’t feel like getting this deep, this corny, and this vulnerable on a day after a holiday came down the pipe, but looking for relationships and happiness is a game I lost many times over.

Yet, like a gambler with an itch, I’ll continue the search, and so should you. Some day, we’ll get there. Some day, we won’t have the play the game anymore.

“I’ve tried every approach to living. I’ve tried it all… I’ve done everything in my life that I wanna do except just give and feel love for my living.” – John Mayer