If you’re anything like me you can’t be within five feet of a unpeeled banana, are furious that you’re not yet best friends with Heidi Klum, and are particularly prickly about how you’re treated when you’re in a particularly prickly mood.

Luckily most people in my life are up to speed on the banana situation, I now live in L.A. and I’m not usually prone to bad moods.

So it wasn’t until several months into our relationship when my entire life came crashing down as a result of too much work, too little time, too many questions and too few answers that R first saw my dark side. I was moody – like one-line-answers-to-every-question moody. Like, don’t-even-care-if-my-accessories-match-my-clothes moody. Like, just-throw-your–wet-hair-in-a-ponytail moody. It. Was. Bad. I complained all day and all night. I didn’t have the energy to do anything. And when R tried to reason with me I dealt him lines straight out of an after school special: whatever, who cares, and it’s not like I can do anything about it, so…

And do you know what R did? Everything right.

Now hold on before you click off this post because you think it just became a why-my-boyfriend-is-the-best-boyfriend-in-the-world story. It isn’t.

R did not do what many girls might have needed. He executed a 60/40 combo tough love/coddling strategy that transitioned into a 80/20 tough love/gifts of frozen yogurt strategy then finished up with the strangely effective I’m-going-to-listen-but-not-say-anything-else move.

I never said, “what I really need is tough love” or “after I complain for ten days straight please stop trying to talk me out of it and just listen.” He just did what felt natural based on who he is and what he knows about me. Ooor he just did what he was able to do after harnessing all the patience he has in the world. Frankly, I’m only concerned with the outcome.

Which brings me to the point of this post: I think you should fake a bad mood within the first three months of a relationship to see how the other guy handles it.

There is nothing worse than coming up against a reaction you can’t handle to a mood that’s already got you holding on by a string. If it’s going to be an issue, it may as well be an issue before things get really serious. And for those concerned with the moral gray area of fake moods just know that it’s kinder than all the complaining you’ll do about the person if they don’t treat you like you were hoping to be treated.

Good luck out there.