You already know who it is — the person you think about more than they think about you. You've told yourself you're unlucky, that you keep meeting people who don't appreciate you. You're wrong. Every relationship runs a silent equation, and whoever cares more holds the lower hand. Machiavelli mapped this five centuries before anyone had a word for attachment, and he didn't ask people to be better — he built a system around the fact that they won't. Here's that system, and the question underneath it: if you stopped caring more, who would actually leave?