Do you really think motherhood, child, and growing up have such an impact on the expectations you have of relationships? Because those sound sort of roundabout, and I think a lot of people say those sorts of things as excuses, but I don’t know if that’s true for you or not. The past trouble, that I can easily see having a huge impact.

It is definitely that I tend to put long term relationship-ness into something that should really not get more energy than a short relationship. I have my theories on why I do this, and why it is so devastating for me. Those theories are include things about motherhood, having a youngish child, my changing body, getting older, and the fact that I didn’t used to ever have a problem getting attention (for way longer than I wanted, usually). And maybe also the fact that the only longish-term “serious” poly relationship outside my “primary” one ended up ending badly and causing years of residual blah for me.

I really just need to chill and not have expectations. That’s the bottom line.

I completely agree that it’s generally about some combination of the NRE (all-natural braindrugs ftw!) and the sex (relative importance of these depends on the individual), and that 98% of the people saying they’re doing it because it’s enlightened are either miscommunicating or not thinking very critically about what they’re saying in the first place. And if people are telling you that how you’re feeling isn’t as enlightened as it “should” be then I highly recommend telling them to go fuck themselves with some rusty co-lab debris. But aside from that I happen to think that NRE and sex are both pretty damn nifty (and the cuddles, too. big fan there), and for me at least when the letdowns happen they aren’t really so bad compared with the good times.

I wonder if perhaps the short relationships part could be near the center of the issue. If you (or whoever this is about) are investing levels of emotion appropriate to long-term relationships in what end up being short-term ones but with all the breakup yuck of the long-term energy that you put into it, I could easily see the benefit not being worth the cost. Maybe you (or whoever this is about) might benefit from either learning to put less up-front energy into an iffy relationship, or else focus on finding people more likely to stick around to pay back the yucks with yays.

Oh, and lemme know if you need some help with the no new genitals in two years thing. I have some ideas.

If these are the expected outcomes then you are already setting up for failure.