Not talking about being with one partner at a time. Talking about the idea of finding “the one” and being with them your whole life.
50% divorce rate. 97% of people (in the US) don’t wait till marriage, so most of us have multiple sexual partners prior to the one we stick with. Many have children with more than one partner.
How can anyone look at the world and think, yeah, there’s one that’s meant for everyone and just one?
Also hope I don’t come across disrespectful. If you do believe in monogamy, I am interested in hearing from you. I’m just buzzed and thinking about my own love life and being curt
Edit: Speaking to the idea that it’s the “natural order” or default. Not that it can’t work in individual circumstances, especially when we’ve been programmed for decades
To me, what you’re describing is exactly monogamy, but you’re classifying it wrong. Sure, you have a lot of partners before you find your “the one”. I’ve had 3 so far. But that doesn’t exclude you from monogamy once you’ve had your first partner, which is what you brushed off in your first sentence. Monogamy is one partner at a time, not that you find one person at the very beginning and get it right the very first time.
The idea of finding “the one” is, to me, someone that I want to spend the rest of my life with. And it takes a long time to find that person. And there’s more than one “the one” out there! I know that sounds contradictory, but come on, there’s 8 billion people out there, any set of desirable traits you could write down are shared by who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people. So you date lots of people, get to know lots of people, and then when you find someone who checks all your checkboxes and who you can see living with til death do you part, then you stay with them.
One might say one person for who knows how many dozens of years could get boring, or that one person at a time is too restrictive. To them I’d say, that’s fine, you’re polyamorous or something of the sort, and that’s okay. But to me, having one and just one partner is special. I’m entirely theirs and they’re entirely mine (in a romantic way, not a possessive way), and that’s just how I like it. I want someone, just one person, I can always rely on to watch a terrible movie with, always have a player two, always rant to or be ranted to, and so on. That’s what makes it special. The exclusiveness is part of the charm, I suppose-- it’s not just any old person they want, it’s me they want. And my feeling is mutual to them.
I don’t think I wrote this exactly the way I wanted it to come out, and I mulled over it a couple times, but I hope I got my point across. Everyone’s different, and that’s okay.