Confessions of a Serial Monagamist Part One

Yeah, I am a girl who likes things warm and cozy. Stable. I am a nester. My first kiss turned in to a year and a half relationship. And while not all my relationships didn't last for-e-ver, there is one common denominator. Me. Getting real comfy, real fast. Even while sowing my wild oats and finding people to casually date, I can only end up keeping one at a time. Make out buddies? Forget it. If I am making out with you and suddenly find someone else to have fun with too a massive internal struggle ensues. Who do I choose?

Why is this bad? Well....I can't say I judge it to be bad, but I am only now having a big realization about this pattern. What I see in all these relationships and situations is Comfort. In talking to Karen she related it to board games. You roll the dice, you land on your spot, and don't much think or worry about it until forced to with the next roll of the die. Just a piece taking up some space in your square. There is no conscious choice to go on, or not. You just hang out until it is your turn to do something.

Well, that's how I play anyway. I tend to stick around because I genuinely like the person I am in relationship with and it is what I know. It is easier to stay on board than thinking up some new unknown future. And the cost of this comfort, for me, has always been compromise that results in not only losing my partner, but ultimately sight of myself.

With my current relationship I have promised myself to do it differently. To remember how important I am, and my happiness is, to the whole. This concept, however, is foreign in practice so really it has turned into an Independence or Death match. Being stubbornly insistent at times on a decision. And while I can see that this is an extreme move, it has so far been the only move I have been able to make.

So I am seeing now that the only way forward is to reconcile my old extreme pattern with my new extreme pattern. To find a way to gracefully move between the two. And to wake in the morning and see the IN hall and choose it instead of the YOU OR ME.