Ain't love grand?

The phone rang early Valentine's Day morning, bringing down a long-distance call from a friend in a panic -- the latest installment in an ongoing melodrama that seems to have no end.

I was called, I suppose, as I seem to be all too often -- the voice of reason drafted to try and talk everybody through the chaos.

It didn't even involve me being a lawyer; the people involved were half a country away, and well beyond much of anything official I cared to do.

Instead, I was drafted because, at 3 a.m., they all trust me to make sense of things. Amid the break-up, I make sure everybody agrees to get their CD collections and favorite shirts back.

Duly detached, often half-awake, I can sit there on the phone calmly, listen to all the disenchanted tearful talk, the passion and the warfare, make a logical suggestion -- and usually manage a compromise.

(I wish I could say when that happens, there's not a sharp element of simply wanting to get things resolved so I can go back to bed.)

When last I'd spoken to my friend, she'd ditched a longtime mate whose love of drink had led to some nasty fights, conducted viciously and in public.

Their friends learned way more than we cared to about their bedroom habits and alleged inadequacies from the war of words.

All the typical damage occurred between them, the holes punched in walls and personal belongings scattered. There were the usual oaths that this time -- for real -- it was done.

There'd be no taking him back, she said. Her kids disliked him. She'd had enough.

She'd found a new man, she said -- an old childhood flame who treated her like a princess. The kids loved him. Everything was great.

That was around New Year's Eve, and I heard few updates for around a month. That's usually the case when things go well.

I wish I could say I didn't expect the call. I always do. Heard the same story so many times from so many friends and acquaintances I could recite it in my sleep. I sometimes do, when they call late enough.

The new guy'd come on strong, trying to buy her a car and spending some serious money, far more than anybody should just a month into dating.

(Still, I got what he was saying. He was trying to solve all her problems, and -- he insisted -- he loved her. Again, it seemed extremely early to be saying that sort of thing, but in an era where the mere word gets tossed around so much it's becoming devalued coin, it's not surprising he said it.)

Anyway ... long story short, a mere month after dispatching her troubled ex claiming it over forever, he sauntered back in, beer in hand, and she was smitten again.

"I love him," she said with all the requisite emphasis. "I know that now."

Duly despairing, the new beau bemoaned his sorry, suddenly single fate to me, the neutral third party, as he wondered why the ladies fall for the so-called "bad boys."

Don't sweat it, I said, suggesting seriously that if he gives it another month, chances are the paradigms will have realigned again, and he'll be back with her.

He thinks I'm kidding. I'm not. It'd be a sucker bet for anybody to wager against it. All the same, if he waits two months, chances are he and she will be broken up again.

Some things are just too predictable. It's the mating dance as do-si-do, change your partner -- and take all the fun out of dysfunctional relationships as you go.

And so it goes.

They hung up satisfied, convinced it was all for the best. They wanted resolutions -- really just temporary solutions -- and not advice.

If they'd asked for some, I'd have given them this:

The worst mistake people make is confusing their lives for a bad soap opera. There's an innate need, it seems, to make decisions based less on logic and more on pure feeling, yet so many treat the people we claim to love as abstractions, never getting how we hurt them.

That said, most things don't work out, so enjoy them while they last. Fun and love don't always keep well.

Also, understand this much: When it's meant to be, it's easy more often than not.

Still, the world would be a better place if fairy tales and valentines didn't suggest the ideal ending should be "And they lived happily ever after," but rather "And so they dealt with it as best they could ..."