‘I date a lot but have never been in a long-term serious relationship – am I missing out?’

Dear Roe,

I’m a 39-year-old straight man. I’m employed, rent my own place and am in generally good shape. I’m extroverted, use dating apps and had a few relationships with good women. Most of them ended around the year-mark, mainly because it just didn’t feel right or I felt the relationships weren’t adding to my life. I have a group of friends I have known since school and all of them are now married and/or having babies. I’m happy for them but there has been an increase in the amount of jokes and comments about me never having had a serious relationship (according to them). I don’t mind the jokes, I’ll joke back about them about never having a lie-in again, but I suppose I’m feeling there’s a perception that I’m immature or selfish because I haven’t had more serious relationships. I don’t want to settle, but I’m wondering if I’m missing out. Any advice?

I find your curiosity and openness really endearing, and I think those qualities are going to guide my answer. Of course I could just defend all of your choices so far, which would be easy – you seem to have a comfortable life; you don’t need to and should not make life decisions based on arbitrary timelines or what your friends are doing; it’s not selfish to want to remain single; and if you enjoy dating and meeting new people and find that adds interest and excitement to your life, that’s great. If you felt it was necessary, you could place boundaries around your friends’ comments about your life choices or just continue your good-natured teasing back about their life decisions. I will also push back against the utterly ridiculous idea that having children automatically makes anyone more mature. Hopefully most people do indeed rise to the challenge when they have children and become more generous, caring, emotionally intelligent versions of themselves, but this is not an automatic process. It also erases the maturity and self-awareness required to decide to not have children in a society where that is the norm.

But you’re wondering whether you’re missing out on anything by not having a more serious, long-term relationship, and I think that interest and curiosity is important to take seriously. I trust that you would dismiss the jokes and comments if you felt they had absolutely no merit, but if you’re finding yourself more intrigued by the idea of a serious relationship, it may indicate that you’re willing to have a new experience and explore the potential for transformation that comes with that.

‘My partner’s mother has a sharp tongue and she won’t stop commenting on my weight’

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‘My crush is gay and will never love me back. How do I cope?’

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‘My ex said she wanted to marry me – so how has she moved on so quickly?’

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‘I’m an assault survivor and don’t want as much sex as my partner’

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It’s interesting that you have ended most of your relationships after about a year, or as the honeymoon phase of the relationship ends. The honeymoon phase of a romantic relationship is a thrilling and emotionally charged period, characterised by intense feelings of passion, excitement and happiness that’s influenced by the novelty of being with someone new, and the elevation of certain hormones such as dopamine and serotonin which contribute to feelings of happiness, excitement and pleasure. The honeymoon stage also involves cognitive factors such as idealisation, where a partner’s good qualities are emphasised while their flaws are overlooked.

There’s a reason we call this a “phase”, however. As relationships progress, the intensity of these feelings will naturally subside, and long-term relationships require navigating the transitions and challenges that come after it, recognising each other’s flaws, navigating conflict, reclaiming some personal time and agency and building a more stable, fully-rounded connection based on mutual understanding, support and commitment – a commitment that might require more effort than the excitement-fuelled obsession of an early relationship. The honeymoon phase can last between three to 30 months, but if all your relationships are ending at about 12 months, it may be that this is the point that you start noticing your partners’ flaws and the sense of obsession about them wanes, which you interpret as the relationship no longer feeling “right” – when actually what is happening is that the relationship is evolving into something more grounded.

I will never judge you for liking the honeymoon phase – it’s pretty gorgeous and by nature, intoxicating. But staying in a serious relationship beyond that opens up opportunities to learn a huge amount. You will learn more about your partner as you see them as a fully-rounded individual and go through more experiences together, including conflict and life stress. You will learn about communication, negotiation, effort, commitment and care. You will learn about intimacy and commitment. And you will, if you are willing, learn so much about yourself; your flaws, conflict style, behavioural patterns, your ability to apologise and grow and evolve. You will learn what it’s like to have to sacrifice for someone else, to feel out of control and inconvenienced and occasionally bored – and how to either tackle the boredom or even find it interesting or nice in its own quiet way. You may also get your ego and your feelings hurt, and you may learn about pain and heartbreak and having to make the terrifying decision to try again.

Choosing not to learn, not to explore, not to try, is not risk-free. The risk is stagnation, and basing your life decisions on cowardice

What we’re talking about is a transformative experience – and transformative experiences are intimidating. Philosopher and cognitive scientist LA Paul writes that when we consider making a major life decision, we project “ourselves forward into different possible futures”, trying to imagine how it will feel. But when we’re considering an experience that may fundamentally change us, we are “confronted by the brute fact that before we undergo the experience, we know very little about what these future outcomes will be like from our own first-person perspective”. We don’t know how we will be changed, how uncomfortable the process will be, and whether it will feel rewarding. There is also the very real possibility that a long-term serious loving relationship may do what all transformative experiences do, which is change us at a core level, altering our values, priorities and desires in ways we simply cannot predict. That’s a lot of control to surrender, and for someone like yourself who has a comfortable life, it may feel like too much risk.

But choosing not to learn, not to explore, not to try, is not risk-free. The risk is stagnation, and basing your life decisions on cowardice. As Paul writes, “We only learn what we really need to know after we have already committed ourselves. If we try to escape the dilemma by avoiding the new experience, we have still made a choice.”

I’m not telling you that the only life worth living involves a long-term relationship, or that you need to stay with someone unsuitable as a learning experience. But I do think your curiosity may be coming from a desire for some form of evolution or transformation, and you should respect and cultivate that desire. Maybe the next time you meet a good woman, you remain open to the possibility of staying even after the butterflies fade, and see if you can find beauty and excitement in what comes after.

In her poem Neolithic Revolution, Ali Shapiro writes about being tired of the way love turns us into animals, though “at first it was thrilling. The we have no words for this. The we are just our bodies.” But she entreats her lover to enter into a different, more considered way of loving, writing, “look at my cortex. Look at my opposable thumbs. I want out of this stew. I want to use tools. I want to develop agriculture and walk upright towards you through this field of corn that we planted, on purpose, because we were hungry, and human, and knew exactly what we were doing.”

Will you brave this transformation with someone, to listen to your hunger, to use tools, to plant, on purpose, and see what grows?