# RIP Relationship, 1998-2010

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-relationship-1998-2010/545394
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [July 3, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-relationship-1998-2010/545394 "2010-07-03T04:01:27Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Page:** 6

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### Author: ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)
#### Post date: [July 13, 2010, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-relationship-1998-2010/545394/101 "2010-07-13T09:06:59Z")

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> [@AHunter3](#):
>
> Oddly, perhaps, it wasn’t THAT one that stuck in her craw and let to repeated arguments back & forth, but rather a related (in my opinion) issue: promising (or refusing to promise) permanence.
> 
> I always said no one can know what they are going to feel tomorrow; you can only say what you feel TODAY. That love is not safe and cannot be made safe, that it is INTRINSICALLY risky. And of course that people who promise “until death do us part” either make the promise lightly and rescind it if & when they are no longer in love or else make it with seriousness and then would stay with you out of duty when they no longer love you, perhaps do not even LIKE you.
> 
> She said her way of being in relationships is “serial monogamy” — that she can only be involved with one person at a time but that she _expects_ every relationship to expire eventually, and yet nevertheless took issue with my “you can only speak of what you feel today, you should not make promises about whether you will love tomorrow or that you will stay together forever”. It wasn’t that she wanted or expected that either of us should stay in the relationship if in fact tomorrow came and we found that we were NOT in love any longer, and I found it inconsistent and confusing.
> 
> I think this argument / lack of mutual understanding _was_ toxic in our relationship, and that for years she felt like my expression of this philosophical understanding meant that I always had one foot out the door. I always felt bad about that but I don’t feel bad about the sentiment _per se_ or the way I put it into words _per se_ (hey, _most_ people seem to understand the concept), but I sure wish we had not let so many years go by during which she was expecting me to announce I was leaving her. Which, not because of this or in spite of it for that matter, I eventually did.
> 
> If I could have unsaid that and derived the same observation perhaps from her phrase “serial monogamy”, I would have.  
> …Anyway, the poly thing sort of took a back seat to that one as an issue between us. When it would come up, it would segue quickly into this other concern: less “Oh I know you want to be with other women as well as me” and more “Oh you’re going to meet someone who makes your nerve endings tingle and then you’re going to leave me”. Perhaps on some occasion I did reply back “Well if I do I’ll still want to stay involved with you” but just got back a “Well that’s not gonna happen, so get over it”. And perhaps once “Well if I did, what I would want is to also stay involved with you as well, and since you’ve said I can’t have that, not losing you with whom I have a connection would probably be the more important consideration” but that didn’t go anywhere productive either.

So, you weren’t promising permanence, but neither was she, expecting the relationship to “expire” at some point, and in the meantime accusing you of being prepared to leave her for another person, even though BY DEFINITION poly means being able to enter a relationship without abandoning an existing one. If she had found someone she’d rather be with, she would have been the one leaving, since “serial monogamy” doesn’t lend itself to multiple concurrent relationships. That’s a bit… well, hypocritical. And it ignores the basic definition of poly in order to use it as a weapon, which I am heartily sick of seeing.

I believe in commitment, I believe it can occur between more than two people at a time, and I also believe that sometimes it is necessary to break a commitment if something goes so horribly wrong that it is hurting the people involved. I’ve known people who stuck with their commitments in spite of the terrible things it was doing to them, and I hope never to experience that in my marriage. I fully intend for this relationship to be “til death do us part” and for us to be good for each other until that time, regardless of who else may or may not be involved in it with us.

Just in case anyone is wanting to make any snap judgments about what poly means to me, I could not possibly get involved intimately (sexually or otherwise) with another person without having real feelings for them and wanting a serious relationship. So no, it doesn’t mean “sleeping around”. It means “being **in love with** more than one person at a time”, and that itself is something I have no more control over than the fact that I prefer men to women. I did not choose to be poly any more than I chose to be heterosexual. I simply discovered the fact after a lot of living and loving and making mistakes and self-searching. And then found out that there are other people out there who feel similarly, so I didn’t feel quite so alone anymore. 😉

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