Sluts. A fantastic topic, for sure, but what I want to bring to the Mr. Right table today are what I call “relationship sluts.” Chances are, you know one.

A relationship slut is a girl or guy that moves from relationship to relationship to Ben & Jerry’s to relationship. Possibly more interesting than actual sluts, they always earnestly believe that they’ve fallen in a deep, faithful, exaggerated love.

The optimism of these select few is hardly ever mirrored by her closest friends, though. If you have a friend like this, you probably know that hearing about each new love, with all of the bubbling enthusiasm, can make you grow skeptical, cynical and even angry, especially if you’re single. I contend standerbys feel this way because a relationship slut, although often unconsciously so, is tossing around a concept so dear to us: love. And treating love lightly can make it lose its beauty and sensitivity.

Inspired in part by the new-release 27 Dresses (which, yes, I saw. So what?), in which Katherine Heigl’s character helps bride after bride marry, I started thinking about how many people play similar roles in their own lives. With February comes Valentine’s Day, and there will surely be more relationship distress, merriment and confusion; this only translates into more stories told by relationship-ready women to reluctant singles. We get tired of our love-obsessed friends, the stories they tell, the typical problems they have.

My closest friend in high school could be called a relationship slut. Every couple of months he was adamantly in love, but never with the same girl, and without any respect for the former after he was done. As a friend, it was taxing. My most immediate reaction toward the end, when he’d reveal a new pursuit, was always the same: “Oh my god, not again… really!?” followed by “Do we have to go through these infatuations and problems with yet another girl?!”

It is difficult to have a friend that takes relationships lightly. Not only does it make us pessimistic, it takes us more energy to enter relationships and weakens our faith in the relationships we are in. Also, it just sucks.

Now, I hope you would never have 27 friends who are relationship slutty (poor Katherine Heigl), but you may have one friend with about 27 of these relationships. The solution is simple: you need to either ground them in reality (”That drunken frat boy will probably not be ‘the one.’”) or encourage it for yet another round of the same (”He was a kind of cute drunken frat boy.”)

You’ll probably be tempted to create some distance out of sheer annoyance. Don’t do it. Just bear with your overly irrational friend, and laugh at her, or him, through each of the 27.