Monotony and Monogamy: Half rhymes for a reason?

I have, on more than one occasion, been described by my friends as a serial monogamist. It has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve managed to spend the last ten years of my life in and out of long-term relationships without them ever actually amounting to a long-term commitment. I’m not quite a ‘Runaway Bride’: I’ve never so much as ‘had a ring on it’ let alone stood in front of a crowd of people in a white dress…but I do seem to be, if only unwittingly, skilled at vow aversion.

So what have I taken away from this? In 10 years of relationship history there must  be something. Well…After all the laughter and bitter disappointments, the bickering over bedtime bylaws, the insufferably silent waits for the food to arrive at restaurants, after all the first kisses and the final goodbyes there is one thing about the nature of relationships that has become glaringly apparent: boredom is by far the best barometer for below-par love matches there ever was.

People are, afterall, creatures of habit and if you’re not unhealthily in love with a person then the odds are that you will be soon sick of all those darling little idiosyncracies, the same idiosyncracies that are the very reason the “right person” would fall in love with them. My parents, as a case in point, have been together for 34 years. Now I’ve only been around for 28 of those but if I hear dad tell the “hilarious” story of when we were locked out of our holiday apartment in Greece and how he had to leap across the balconies to gain entrance whilst being gawked at by an audience of bemused tourists eating their steak and chips in a restaurant below I think I’m going to find my own balcony and throw myself off it. Our mam shows no suicidal signs however. In fact she laughs along and helps him finish, and often furnish, the story. If that’s not true love I don’t know what is.

So if you don’t envision yourself begging your better half to tell you, once again, about that time they got turned away from Peckham Multiplex of being “too intoxicated” 30 years down the line. If you’re against reminiscing about how you got together over a glass of wine and a slice of pizza because you were both there and know how the story turned out, so what’s the point? If you’d rather watch late-night junk TV than go to bed with your significant other and digest the day under the duvet or, worse still, if you’ve realised in the time it’s taken you to read this blogpost that you have nothing left to say to the person you’re with and don’t find silence anywhere near as comfortable as Missis Mia Wallace once suggested it could be then, friend, I think it’s time to check your boredom barometer. Forever is a lot longer than you think and your Monogamy/ Monotony levels may already be getting too dangerously close for comfort.