But seeing that kind of detail written down on the page, like it is in French author Monica Sabolo's All This Has Nothing to do With Me, makes that behaviour look a bit obsessive, and irrational at times.
In Sabolo's semi-autobiographical book we follow the relationship between MS, a journalist at a French magazine, and her new colleague XX, from its start to its painful end. Sabolo's book is not a straight narrative, it's interspersed with images, extracts from diaries and emails, and is told in three acts - the present, the past, and then back to the present again.
We meet MS as she meets XX, and finds him utterly gorgeous. What follows is her account of the pair's interactions - complete with photographs of all the lighters she has stolen from him, and notes about how many times they touch when they go out for after-work drinks. It's clear from the beginning that MS is way more into XX than he is into her, and her obsessive behaviour is cringe-worthy. I spent the first act laughing, feeling replacement embarrassment for MS, and thinking that I was reading an account of a 14-year-old girl's crush on a schoolboy.
