"Olivia Pope yourself first! Gut-check your mushy insides to see if you're truly, madly, deeply done in," The Root's contributing editor Helena Andrews advises in a piece for XOJane.
… And because there's plenty out there dedicated to what Love allegedly looks like, I'm going to tell you how to spot its apathetic play cousin: the like like. The like like can trap you like quicksand if you don't watch out for it.
1. If he tells a dumb joke in front of your friends and instead of valiantly pity laughing, you roll your eyes hard enough to give yourself a seizure.
2. If you refuse to pause "Scandal" to listen to how his boring un-Scandal-like day went.
3. If your hairdresser/nail tech/neighborhood malt liquor store owner doesn't know him by any name other than "the new boy."
4. If he doesn't know your secret baby name because you don't want him to steal it.
5. If you never discovered his weird stuff collection — whether it's a box of plastic disembodied He-man dolls or love poems written to Ayn Rand — and thought, "I can work with this."
Read Helena Andrews' entire piece at XOJane.
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Helena Andrews is a contributing editor at The Root and author of Bitch Is the New Black, a memoir in essays. Follow her on Twitter.