Backup plans are important. It’s always important to be prepared for when your ideal plan falls through and to have something safe and secondary that you can fall back on.

And yet, when you’re someone else’s backup plan, you don’t feel important. You feel lesser, you were the second choice not number one. Your main draw isn’t being interesting or funny or pleasant, it’s being comfortable and convenient. It’s a well-known fact that being number two feels like s***. All the silver medals in the world can’t make up for the feeling of always being just a hair’s breadth away from the top, centimeters from perfection.

And yet how often do we consider our own backup plans and plan Bs? When we get broken hearted about being our number one’s number two, we perpetuate the cycle with our fallback friends. Not who you truly want to talk to but who you can talk to and when all you want to do is talk and the love of your life is busy in the pool with her fling of the year, who could blame you for hitting up someone reachable.