Serial monogamy

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I’ll admit it. I’m a serial monogamist. I’ve been in a handful of relationships, and all of them have been more or less exclusive. I like being in a relationship (romantically) and I like what comes with it. I’ve spent years of my life single, and I’ve spent some precious time with someone. However, after my last relationship, I find myself in a difficult place. At this stage of my life, it just doesn’t seem like it’s worth the trouble.

Relationships are hard. I’ve been sitting on this post for a hot minute. A relationship is learning about the most intimate details about someone and either accepting them or….not. It requires a level of vulnerability that experience almost nowhere else. It’s essential for a happy life. Research tells us that married people make more money in their lives and are happier than single people. So, why are relationships so very hard?

Falling in Love and Red Flags

Falling in love seems natural. In our early teens, we find ourselves experiencing feelings we have never experienced before. Often this contributes to the fantasy that we create with that other person. We think about all those romantic moments we could have with them. We gloss over the parts of them that aren’t so great. That’s the magic of love, or at least lust!

As boys, we obsess with our ability to attract someone (often the opposite sex, but not always!) and much of our social status is measured by how attractive we are to the opposite sex. Young men want to prove their prowess in attracting young women, and young women want to be attractive to young men and get their attention. The most popular blog posts, websites, and articles spend time thinking about this. I briefly worked as a tarot reader on one of those fortune-telling sites, and I can tell you that nervousness around romance is the top question that everyone asks about. Needless to say, with so much at stake in love and relationships, it can be easy to miss those all too familiar red flags until it is too late.

We don’t see the red flags because we’re attracted, and we want that person to be what we want them to be, not necessarily who they are. We want those moments. We want them to be the person that we have in our heads. We hang onto the sweet moments that make the whole relationship worth it. As young people, we navigate this difficult environment. We are trying to work with the strong feelings of attractive and sexual lust we’re feeling, as well as trying to understand and deal with the reality of being with that person in all their simplicity and complications. Falling in love, falling out of love, you think it’s going somewhere until it’s not. 

Emotional Roller Coasters 

Relationships are always emotional roller coasters. That’s the nature of being involved in someone’s life at a deep level. Their decisions regarding their career, finances, emotional health, physical health and much more can cause chaos in our lives. We fight, we make up and go on. There’s a reason most of the popular music is written about love and relationships. We leave someone but find that we can’t live without them. If we divorce we have to deal with custody battles, alimony, child support and other complications. Property has to be divided and years of work can suddenly go down the drain. When a relationship ends, the person you loved and perhaps loved you turns on you and suddenly, there is bitterness and hate where there was once love, and that hurts the most of all. We become someone else when a relationship ends and there’s even more emotion to handle.

However, the emotional rollercoaster doesn’t begin there, it actually begins when we’re searching for that special someone. Why are some people seemingly always in a relationship while others are terminally single, like some sort of romantic death sentence? I’ve always thought that was odd. There’s an adage that “there’s someone for everyone” but I doubt that’s true. This has come into sharp focus for me as I get older. I never intended to be single at 33 years old. Every time you put yourself out into the world seeking love, there’s a new ride to get on. Will they like me? Will anyone swipe right on me?

We are slaves to our desires at some point. How do we balance all of that? Usually badly. We have a physical need for sex, an emotional need for love, and a psychological need for closeness with other humans. In our society, a romantic relationship is a big part of that, and yet, it is always so hard and fraught with emotional danger. That’s supposed to be the beauty, but at what point is it just traumatic?

Dependency

One of the reasons relationships are traumatic has to do with dependency and how dependent we feel to another person. In our youth, it is easy to erase all boundaries and just become one with the other person. We are changing identities and leaving our family supports behind for the world outside the bubble of childhood. Yet, this always ends in disaster because while being in a relationship we must maintain our independence but only to a point.

In relationships, it is too easy to fall into co-dependency. We often put far too much emotional weight on our romantic partners. Men are particularly bad at this, but it can be a problem for women and others as well. It seems like the key in a relationship is not being too independent, while considering their feelings about your actions. However, it is important to not be too intimidating and to leave a space open for that other person to slot into your life. Years ago, someone told me that if I didn’t have a “boyfriend shaped hole” in my life, that it would be impossible to get one. I suppose that is why I’ve never dated a man and only women.

This concept seems a bit counter-intuitive. It seems like we shouldn’t need someone to fill space in our lives. That’s in contrast to being the sort of person that fulfill another’s needs romantically. Yes, it’s easier to be hot and good-looking but that matters less than having the right personality that feeds into people’s needs. Attractiveness will only get you so far, and for some, that’s all that they need. Others need even more, and it seems impossible to figure out what exactly is needed and if the compatibility is real. Relationships are just plain hard.

So, why are relationships so hard? 

We want to be totally accepted for who we are, warts and all. But that’s not how humans really work, is it? We’re a bundle of wants and needs, and we trust a stranger to try to care for us in that special way. There are emotions, sex, and…? That special thing that keeps people coming around, the way we feel when we are with someone. There are a variety of factors of why a relationship works and why it doesn’t. My Nana told me once that she was in a workshop about marriage etc. and someone mentioned that people who have a relationship that works really well know they are lucky, and they don’t know what the special sauce is about doing it and having it they way they have it. So, what does it all mean? I honestly have no idea. I wrote this just to share some thoughts and to have a nice long think about things. For me, a relationship is a distant possibility in my life. It is no longer a primary goal. I envision a life for myself, quite alone just doing my thing. Perhaps that is the advantage of age: I don’t need it to live anymore.