17 Signs Chicken Nuggets Are Your Boyfriend

1. When you think about chicken nuggets, your heart starts to flutter a little bit, and you have trouble remembering what you were just doing. “Are you okay?” your friends ask. “I’m fine,” you reply, with a little laugh. But they know — it’s obvious. You’re thinking about chicken nuggets.

2. Whenever someone mentions chicken nuggets’ name in conversation, you pretend not to listen, but really you’re focusing on everything they say. You can’t help it, hearing what other people have to say about chicken nuggets gives you butterflies.

3. All of your memories with chicken nuggets are better than the last — the honey mustard, the ranch, the side of fries, the icy soda to wash it all down. Each experience with chicken nuggets was its own perfect moment in time, whether parked in front of your favorite cartoons or in a friend’s car on the way to the beach.

4. Sometimes, during important moments, you often find yourself turning and expecting to see chicken nuggets — wishing that they could share it with you — and are disappointed to find that you’re all alone.

5. There are so many secret moments between the two of you (that time you got fired from the restaurant so you parked outside the Chick Fil A and ate two boxes of chicken nuggets while crying and listening to Death Cab), sometimes you feel like there is a language that only the two of you speak.

6. When you’ve said that you’re giving chicken nuggets up in the past — “I’m going on a diet!” “I’m cutting out processed food for good!” — you knew those were just words. You knew you would always come back to them, in some form or another, eventually.

7. Sometimes you see imitations of chicken nuggets — some pathetic little ball of crusted sadness made of soy — and you become bitter at the thought. “How dare they imitate chicken nuggets! They don’t even understand them!”

8. You can sense when chicken nuggets are in the room, even if no one tells you. Your connection is just that strong, that intense.

9. When a friend has tried to tell you that chicken nuggets were bad for you — throwing these crazy, meaningless words like “deep fried” or “empty calories” — you knew to tune them out. They were just jealous of your relationship, and wanted to destroy it for their own selfish reasons.

10. Their smell intoxicates you, like nothing else can.

11. Sometimes, when you pass chicken nuggets in the supermarket, you stop to look at them for a minute. Maybe you won’t get them this time, but you know that they’re there, and there’s something deeply comforting about that.

12. They might change shape, look a little different, or come in boot form, but you still love them. You know that it’s what it’s on the inside (succulent all-white chicken meat) that truly matters.

13. Sometimes when you’re at a party, you make an excuse to leave early and go home. You just can’t fake it, you’d rather be at home with Netflix and chicken nuggets than at some lame party, drinking just to have fun. The fact that you’re able to go home and be yourself under a blanket is immensely important to you.

14. When you see someone else with chicken nuggets, you pretend like you aren’t jealous, but it’s all you can think of. It consumes you from within.

15. Occasionally, you have burned them, but you have still enjoyed them. And you’re sorry for having hurt them.

16. Some people think in terms of five-year plans, you think in terms of dipping sauces. There are just so many you haven’t tried yet, and you’re sure that they will all look equally good on the one you love.

17. Whoever you’re with right now might be okay — great, even — but they’re not chicken nuggets. And you know it. Deep down, you know it.