Standing Backwards on the Relationship Escalator: Resisting all that’s Compulsory in Romance

I’ve been single for nearly five years. The longer I live like this, the more relief I feel. With myself, with my friends and family, there’s less pressure to be someone I’m not. There are no prescribed steps or rituals to perform. There’s freedom in simply loving. There’s also less turbulence because there’s no relationship escalator we’re forced or expected to ride. 

Even if you’ve never heard the term ‘relationship escalator,’ chances are you’re familiar with the concept. The relationship escalator refers to a set of customs and steps we’re all taught to follow within our romantic relationships. It varies of course by culture, country, religion and sexuality but Hollywood, the mouthpiece of the American dream, pumps out a very particular image. It begins with dating and is expected to lead us to the end goal of a permanently monogamous marriage until death. We’re meant to present as a couple with the regular monikers of ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend’ (read for heteronormativity). And we’re supposed to end all other romantic, sexual or intimate connections to do so. We’re expected to shift and make infinite room for this person, eventually, we’re expected to merge our lives. First comes love, then comes marriage. Sounds delicious, doesn’t it? Who could refuse? 

There was a time in my life when I couldn’t even imagine wanting anything different. I used to self-describe as a hopeless romantic. I wanted nothing more than to ascend that escalator with the perfect person. Back when I believed there to be a perfect person. When I believed every person to only get one person - one soulmate. Back when I thought romantic love was the ultimate possession. The ultimate harbinger of the truth that I too am worthy of intimacy, of love, of emotional safety. Unbeknownst to me it was actually patriarchy, capitalism and heteronormativity that were successfully taking root in my heart. Now I’m the first to get the fuck off the relationship escalator or refuse to get on in the first place. 

It took my first relationship, my first experience of romantic betrayal, and my first breakup to realize just how well I’d been brainwashed into defining love using a prescribed and very particular understanding. It took a lot of tears and some bell hooks to realize that the vulnerability and emotional safety I sought weren’t foreign to me at all. They weren’t far and I didn’t need a romantic relationship to know them either. 

I loved someone for a year before I realized the way we were taught to love wasn’t sustainable. I fought someone - and myself - for most of a year before accepting that our ways of loving were incongruent. Then, my ethos, which I now see bordered on relationship anarchy, combined with her desire to emulate a Disney fairytale, was a recipe for disaster. And it took a devastating break-up for me to recognize that we’d set ourselves up for failure. But isn’t that what happens when we fail to know ourselves? Isn’t that what happens when we fail to do our emotional work and instead seek romantic partnership as a remedy for our lack of self-knowledge and self-love?

In the five years since I left that relationship, I’ve been faced again and again with these same questions. Answering them has allowed me to see, love and understand myself, and what I’m looking for in all my relationships, with more clarity. 

That relationship was nothing more than a test. A test of authenticity, a test of my ability to maintain boundaries. Ultimately it was a test of whether or not I could stand on the things I believed when challenged. It was a test of my values - of both of our values. Do I mean the things I say? Do I live and love in the ways that I think I do? In the ways my loved ones need? Am I overextending and filling someone’s cup even when I’m thirsty? Are my thoughts, beliefs and actions really in accordance with one another? And what do I do if not? 

The year I spent in that relationship showed me aspects of self I’d never previously encountered. And I still don’t fully know what to do with that. As much pain as I left that relationship with, as many wounds as I was forced to heal, I stand here now with more lessons and more learning than would’ve ever been possible without it. Everything’s a lesson, that was my first lesson. 

I think one of our biggest issues was the mismatch in how we defined and understood relationships to inherently function. She could never clearly state what she was looking for, how she defined a relationship, or what she needed from me - like I was expected just to know somehow. As if there’s common sense to these things. She couldn’t say what she wanted but she sure knew what she didn’t want when she saw it. This failure to know and communicate our truths leads to relational breakdown. We’re never taught how to communicate what we want. And if we can’t state our needs, they can’t be met. It’s like Disney wants to lead us toward failure. 

My ex rarely spoke about her past experiences. She failed to see the learning opportunity in introspection. Never saw the importance of getting to know the people around me. Didn’t want me to spend time with anybody but her, and never tried to connect with my friends. It was easier to sow seeds of discord between me and the people I held closest. She once told me she disliked one of my friends then refused to tell me who. We could talk about isolation as an abuse tactic but in this case, I’d instead point to how capitalism and patriarchy could be just as useful explanations. 

Under capitalism, romantic couples are rewarded and then coerced into centring that partnership in every other aspect of their lives. It’s not her fault she fell victim to that thinking. Maybe it’s more mine for failing to communicate that I would never conform to that expectation. Shaping my life in this way, moulding my life around her and our partnership, was never my aim. Being strangled by 

capitalistic expectations isn’t what I’m looking for. And capitalism will never favour how I’d prefer to be in relationship. Capitalism as it currently functions won’t reward the commune. Won’t reward five friends who buy a house together, who raise kids together, who care for elders together. Won’t reward someone who calls all their closest friends a variation of Hubby and Wifey and Baby. Won’t reward someone who prioritizes platonic love over romantic love - how much profit could be gained if we all lived like that anyway? Exactly.

Under (capitalist) patriarchy, transaction and ownership are the primary modes of relating. As disappointing as it is when queers fall into these ways of doing, I can’t blame her for that either. It’s easier to do what we’re told. It’s easier to do what we see everybody else doing than to do the inner work to redefine love in relationships. As someone swimming in the waters of lesbianism, the last thing I want is for my relationships to emulate any aspect of the patriarchy. I will fight with every fibre of my being to resist its teachings. I want autonomy and freedom for every person I’m in relationship with, which means I refuse to enact the will of our oppressors within them. I refuse to embody the oppressor in my heart, in my mind, in my relationships or in my bedroom. 

Under heteronormativity, queerness of all kinds are devalued, if not denied. And the queerness inherent in my first romantic relationship was both trivialized and disrespected by strangers and some now distant family alike. But my ex went out of her way to denigrate the value of my friendships and queerplatonic relationships as well. I see my chosen people as an extension of my biological family, an improved expansion if you will. I see them as the true companions of my spirit, and that threatened how she saw herself and our relationship in an imagined hierarchy. But there is a queerness, there is something radical and valuable, about prioritizing my communal relationships as equally as I do romantic ones. There is no hierarchy, at least not in this house. 

But under compulsory monogamy, the romantic relationship is meant to be the most significant in our entire lives. Love is meant to be reserved for two under this system but I love too many people to stand on a relationship escalator. I love so many people that my life has many centres. My family isn’t complete without all my husbands, all my wives, all my non-sexual lovers and all my friends. Nobody is more important than another. Nobody deserves more or less love than another. Nobody comes before another, we all come at the same time! 

Believing there’s just one soulmate for each of us reduces our capacity to love. In this individualist culture, we’re taught to believe there’s just one special person for each of us so we fail to see how special we all are. We’re not meant to understand each other as vital in this ecosystem called life. We’re not meant to have community. If we truly believe loving this one person will make us whole, what motivates us to love all people? What motivates us to create love instead of waiting for it to arrive? Love exists on this planet in abundance. Love is everywhere. We just need to learn to nurture it. To learn what it needs to grow. Love, care, trust, and intimacy don’t have to be reserved for romance. And they shouldn’t be. Every relationship we engage in would be stronger and could be sweeter if only we realized this. 

On an unconscious level, I knew all these things about myself for the entire year and a half I spent in that romantic relationship. I knew all these things about love and the world. But my thoughts only began crystalizing when I saw all that I didn’t want and all that I didn’t value in that romantic relationship. And in the five years since I walked away, I’ve become better able to see myself with clarity. Love feels clearer, and almost like I’m starting to define it in my own voice. I don’t have to become what someone else expects of me to be loved. I don’t have to de-prioritize my friends - and anybody who wants me to is probably holding onto a bunch of other red flags. I don’t have to fit into a mold to be deserving of love. In fact, I’ve always been deserving, just like I’ve always been surrounded by it.