Monogamy: A Side Effect of Fewer Choices?

I have noticed three things that occur when one leaves an academic environment. First, the number of fresh faces in your life significantly drops. Second, people have the tendency to be more monogamous. Third, breakups often lead to reconciliation. I may be jumping to conclusions, but the three seem to have a something to do with each other.

Let’s go back in time for a moment. When I nineteen years old, I was traveling through Spain and met two Americans in their late twenties having third-life-crises. They had quit their law firms, divorced their wives and were off to teach English in the Czech Republic after traveling first. One of them told me a single piece of advice to remember. (On a side note, when you give advice, make it one piece. People remember it!). The young guru’s advice was this:

“After you finish college or law school or med school or B school or grad school or whatever, you’ll notice a lot of your friends marrying the girlfriends or boyfriends they happen to have at the time. You’ll feel compelled to do the same. Whatever you do, don’t marry that person!”

It was an interesting warning that has stuck with me (though the fellow’s name and face have escaped me). For a number of years, I assumed that the desire to marry after a graduation came from either peer pressure, the convenience of being finished with school or just because it is a period of change. Eight and half years after my trip to Spain, now in my late twenties myself, I think I have realized that there is something else to it.

Nearly every one of my friends is in a relationship that at one time was broken up. (Snazzler, Stupid Skeleton, Gus Fuckberg, Shoffy, Soulless Hedonist, Clunt and Matty Potter all are in relationships that were once broken up). I, too, feel the desire of wanting to call my ex-girlfriend up. Why do people want to get back together when experience tells them differently? Well, every relationship breaks up from it not working on some level, but, on a more cynical level, everyone breaks up because they think they can do better. If everyone breaks up because they think they can do better, then the reverse must also be true. People get back together because they fear they cannot do better.

Why this change? Why do people feel confident that they can do better and then change their mind? The most obvious answer is they went off into the world to find nothing, became lonely and insecure and came running back. After all, when you are out of school, where do you meet people? Bars and clubs? God, no! Work? Not too many choices. Friends? Couples are mostly friends with couples. While school is a place with hundreds of people your age in your social class, the working world is not. Thus, in school, people meet, break up, cheat and move on to the next person with more frequency than in the working world.

So, perhaps that’s it. Monogamy could be nothing more than having fewer options, fewer temptations and fewer stokes to your ego. But what to do? Must we all settle? Well, that American in Spain seemed to think that one should keep trying and keep hoping. You have to suffer through the loneliness to find someone new. After all, you can’t steal second with your foot still on first.