All relationships can be boiled down to five stages of Netflix watching. If this does not apply to you, you are highly irregular, and you should work on that. It might just cure your crippling loneliness!

1. Movie Watchus Interruptus
Your date’s going well and suddenly they’re sitting in your room, twiddling their thumbs. Unless you’re totally sauced, the step from dinner talk to touchy touchy must be carefully unearthed. Why not peruse Netflix for something to snuggle up and watch? Try to choose something that will also double as good make out music. Tip: Avoid “James and the Giant Peach.”

2. Let’s get to know each other … ’s TV preferences
You’ve landed a new bedmate, or at least someone who text messages you affectionately on a regular basis. Now’s the time when you cement your bond by watching countless hours of movies and TV together. It’s crucial to use this time to show them how nuanced your media preferences are, and introduce them to your television world. These are the glory days. All your old shows are new again, thanks to their witty commentary. Or maybe they don’t have witty commentary. They might have to skip a Netflix Relationship Step or two.

3. Netflix as nightcap
After you’ve watched their favorite documentary about how pencils are made – shockingly fascinating! – and decided you’ll just never like “King of the Hill” with the same gusto as they do, step two winds down. Soon you’re just putting on whatever, watching “News Radio” while the other person sleeps.

4. Netflix therapy
So you broke up. Suddenly you’ve got all this spare time on your hands, and lots of M&Ms and wine. Getting out of bed is hard for a couple days, but luckily you sleep next to your computer, so you can wake up and watch an entire season of your video equivalent of comfort food every morning.

5. Obligatory Password “Forgetting”
You wonder if there are traces of the other person on your Netflix account. Yes, you recently saw them tagged in a Facebook picture with a redheaded babe, but they still have your password. Maybe, just once, they got drunk and couldn’t resist watching some “Mystery Science Theater” on your account. But no, they are gone. Netflix isn’t asking you to rate the picture quality of “Evil Dead” or “Harry and the Hendersons” anymore. Time to move on.

-Absolutely none of this applies to Becky Lang. None of it.