Stuck in serial monogamy

Wednesday | December 6, 2023

Love Letters Dating

Stuck in serial monogamy

I’m seeking letters about dating app fatigue, how friendships and social groups change as romantic relationships grow … and, of course, all of the problems about getting over breakups.

What’s on your mind about your relationship life?

Submit an anonymous letter here or email
[email protected].

I’m a 24-year-old woman. I’ve been a serial monogamist all of my dating life, only having been single for about four months at a time. My current boyfriend is caring, independent, capable, and could take care of me for the rest of my life if I wanted him to. But I still feel apprehensive about spending the rest of my life with him.

I jokingly say to my friends that my relationships have an “expiration date” – usually set for about two years. Basically, I find that after about two years I start feeling as though the relationship I’m in isn’t right for me anymore. I find myself having crushes and fantasizing about being with other people. After I break up with them, and it isn’t long before I find myself with someone else. The cycle goes on. Currently, I’m at the finding myself fantasizing and having crushes stage of this cycle.

I want to break out of this cycle and move out of the state I’ve grown up in and lived in all my life. But I’m terrified to do it alone; I can’t even move a mattress by myself! We currently live in a city that feels more like a small town and everyone knows everyone. I’m daunted by the idea of breaking up with my boyfriend and then still running into him or everyone that I met through him. I feel like I’m at an impasse. Do I stay with this man and try to make it work, or do I leave him and everyone I know (including my friends that I love and cherish) behind and try to make it on my own?

– Serialized

If you feel like you’re trying to “make it work,” it’s probably not working anymore.

I think that if you explain to your boyfriend that you love him but are too inexperienced and unsettled to make a big commitment – if you are kind about it – you won’t be dropped by every friend. You’ll lose a lot, for sure, but you won’t be 100 percent alone. I would hope that some people in your community would understand and show up with support.

Of course, feeling alone will be part of the process – and it’s an important step to getting to the right place. Sit with the discomfort, find a way through it, and another world will open up to you.

It is so freeing to know that no matter what, you can take care of yourself and build a life without a romantic partner. In my experience, romances are so much more fun when you know they’re not required – that you can choose to be with a person, as opposed to needing them as a main source friendship, community, and service. Especially in the beginning.

Go to a movie by yourself and eat all the best snacks. Join a book/running/craft club for new community.

Know that you can call a TaskRabbit or similar service to move a mattress. You can run a household with a good roommate. Also, you can learn to use a power drill. (That last one is on my list. I think it will be life changing.)

You’re 24 and have so much to experience. Be kind to this significant other by telling him what’s on your mind, be honest with friends, and give yourself the chance to count on yourself for more than a few months. It might change everything – in excellent ways.

You can do it.

– Meredith

Readers? How do you break this kind of cycle if you’re excited about someone for a whole year? How do you stop yourself from getting serious with person after person? Also, when you were single (or if you are now), who moved your mattress?

Breakups 🖤 Dating Everything's perfect but …

Featured Comment

“To really break the cycle, you have to understand why it keeps happening. I imagine it’s 1 of 2 things: you’re either discarding perfectly good partners when things start to get serious because you’re scared to commit, or you pick people who are fundamentally wrong for you (ignoring red flags in the beginning, brushing off major incompatibilities) and are therefore doomed to eventually reach that 2 year mark where things feel wrong (because they never felt totally right in the first place). A therapist could help you get to the bottom of it.”

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