The “Relationship Escalator”

Oftentimes when I talk to people who married young and later divorced I hear them say “I was just doing what I thought I was supposed to do”. I can relate to this myself, as someone who never really believed in monogamy yet was a serial monogamist for years. If you happened to read my answers to the “Week of Visibility for Non-Monogamy” Q&A, I wrote in depth about how often I went against what I knew I really wanted for the sake of what it seemed like the “normal” way to be in a relationship was.

As I began to explore solo polyamory, one of my biggest “ah-ha” moments about my history of internal conflict and compulsory monogamy came when I discovered the concept of the “Relationship Escalator”. The “Relationship Escalator”, a term coined by Amy Gahran, is a metaphor used to describe our default expectations for romantic relationships. It is an escalator, specifically, because it illustrates the lack of intentional choice behind these relationships. It is something we get on and ride all the way up, sometimes without ever noticing it.

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