It’s Friday night. You want to watch a movie. You browse your collection of movies on DVD, pick out an episode of Friday Night Lights, and–why is there a DVD of The Amazing Spider Man in there? Has this ever happened to you?

It happens in my house all the time, but here’s the secret: I do it on purpose. I never put DVDs back in the matching case, and the results have been life changing.

My boyfriend has an amazing collection of movies and TV shows on DVD. Whenever I’m home alone, I switch the DVDs around to different cases. Then when he gets confused and asks me if I put them back, I pretend to have no idea what he’s talking about. That way he thinks he’s losing it!

“Steph, did you watch Fargo and put it back in the Argo case?”

No, of course not! I’ve never even seen that movie. You must have done that the last time you watched it. You must not have been paying attention.

I’ve been doing this simple trick for five months, and now I have a perpetual get out of jail free card.

“Steph, did you forget to pay the electricity bill?”

No honey, you said you were doing that, remember? Gosh, you’re so absent minded lately.

My boyfriend actually broke up with me three weeks ago, but I just came right back the next day and pretended like I didn’t remember a damn thing. He was confused at first, then decided maybe he had just imagined breaking up with me.

That night, he got so frustrated by not being able to find his Goonies DVD that he almost started crying. Luckily, I was able to swoop in and find it right away and comforted him, making him feel so dependent on me that he decided not to re-break up after all.

I’m so lucky to have such a great guy like him in my life..