Is her.

1) In the beginning you invest time, effort, energy and money into the "courtship" phase. Your circle of friends starts to suffer. You hang out with family and loved ones less. You trade in time for things you used to enjoy, to enjoy time with her. You map out plans to impress her so you can be a "couple". Your energy & time go into one basket and you're distracted more and more each day as you start to "bond" and poor more of YOUR efforts into her.

2) With all of your investment(s), you're now IN a LTR. Too bad you can't just put it on cruise control because it would be so much easier. Instead, you find yourself investing the same amount of time (if not more) along with effort, energy and money just to MAINTAIN what you wanted all along. Of course in this phase, SHE becomes more needy and bitchy and to keep things well "maintained" you end up focusing more on her then yourself.

And now her needs start to trump yours. Now her time is more valuable then yours. Her wants/needs/desires come before your own. You find yourself in this conglomerated mess but you soldier on, distracting YOU from YOU. Distracted from work, goals, hobbies, friends, family, pets, work-outs - the list goes on just like the distraction does.

3) The beginning of the end. No happy ending. All's well that ends well but LTR's never seem to end well. In this final phase, everything that was put off or put on hold due to the distraction, is severely hurting. It hurts down to the core because you're stuck facing the hard reality that all that time, effort, energy and money ended up in a black-hole; the insatiable void. Regretfully you know you can never get any of it back, and as far as an investment goes, this is one of your worst. You knew the risks but played with fire anyways.

Now you're forced with reconciling all the friendships, family, events, jobs, hobbies (basically life outside of her) you put on hold. You wren't looking for a unicorn, you were just looking for a normal fuckin woman and a normal fuckin relationship - the kind that doesn't turn to shit 3 months in. Sadly they all do it's a matter of time. Soon as you start talking, flip that hour-glass over because time's ticking. Sadly, new distractions pop up from all the motions that come with the break-up.

When you GYOW there are NO distractions like the one you will find with a female. Aside from incredibly addicting drugs, I don't think you'll find a more potent distraction in life.