Carina Chocano - Do You Love Me or Am I Just Paranoid?: The Serial Monogamists Guide to Love

Do You Love Me
or Am I
Just Paranoid?

THE SERIAL
MONOGAMISTS
GUIDE TO LOVE

Carina Chocano

VILLARD / NEW YORK

Contents

This is a completely unreliable account of things that may or may not have happened to the author, her acquaintances, or her acquaintances college roommates. Names, characters, places, and incidents have been willfully distorted beyond all recognition or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Introduction

Despite the looming threat of repeated failure, people as a people are wildly optimistic about their prospects for love.

In fact, get enough drinks in them, and just before they try to hug you, a surprising number of people will confess to a heartfelt belief that love is all there is in this crazy, mixed-up slag heap of a world. While this belief is not entirely our fault, its nothing to be proud of, either. Children who watch too much television harbor similar beliefs about sugary breakfast cereals, and we dont think them adorably romantic.

What is love, anyway, aside from a liquor-fueled period of psychosis counteracted with a lifetimes worth of received romantic notions and a tingling sensation in the pants? Of course, its loves mysterious qualities that account for a large part of its enduring entertainment value. Most of us are attracted to rare and mysterious things, like truffles and Greta Garbo. Too much information is almost always a turnoff. (Note how Foie Gras sounds delightful, yet Spreadable Ruptured Liver does not.)

In fact, love is a nightmare of compromise and generosity. Still, when it goes wrong, when it fails to appear, or when it comes home blind drunk at three a.m. and pees on the bed, we experience disappointment and a crushing sense of failure. This causes many of us to suffer from what my mother (a picturesque foreigner) amusingly calls low self-steam. We blame ourselves. We vow to embark on a vigorous self-improvement program the very next day. We may even purchase a self-help manual, or maybe a mug with an encouraging saying on it. But the path to self-improvement can be an expensive and hazardous row to hoe, assuming one would even want to hoe a row in the first place. Most of us, on consideration, would prefer not to.

In such a climate, it is not easy to talk about serial monogamy. For one thing, we dont have the words. Look up the word relationship in the thesaurus, and right away youll see the problem. Blood relation doesnt do it, unless you have an attractive cousin and have decided to take advantage of recent changes in the law. Connection seems a weak and rather tepid alternative, given the highly volatile nature of this particular type of connection. Datingan antiquated word that refers to something people did in the fifties and stopped doing once it became okay to openly sleep arounddoesnt describe it either. Relationships can begin as early as the first date, even if that date, as such, never takes place.

But where are the words for that thing that happens when you meet someone (say, in college or at your first job or through a friend), hang out for a few weeks, keep hanging out for a few more years, and move in together, making sure not to purchase any big-ticket items together without holding on to the receipts? And what box do you check on your insurance forms when youve been living with the same person for five years but still arent sure you want to get married because there are some things you have to work on first? You know. Relationships. Whats another word for them?

It may very well be a semantic problem. As words go, relationship is conveniently elastic, and can be used to describe any number of associations, connections, affiliations, dalliances, flings, flirtations, long- and short-term bonds. In almost every instance, it is used to describe ambivalent sexual liaisons that are neither legally binding nor particularly exciting. It is not known, exactly, when the word relationship came to replace other, more descriptive, terms like courtship, engagement, marriage, illicit extramarital love affair, and rebound. Experts trace its modern usage back to a time when people were no longer forced to conduct their love affairs in private, but were still too embarrassed to use the word lover in public. Thankfully, this is still the case.

I do not claim to be an expert in the field of successful relationships. But if any subject lends itself to the sort of indolent, poorly researched, and whimsically half-cocked theories I will put forth in this mercifully slim volume, its the practice of segueing from one committed relationship to another without pausing to consider why one is segueing from one committed relationship to another.

Is there advice contained in this book? Yes, but its terrible. On the other hand, its probably just the sort you generally give yourself, so theres no hard work involved. If you follow it, you will learn how to leap blindly from relationship to relationship, how to ignore your better instincts, how to drag out a doomed affair, how to enter into an exciting rebound, how to make the most of your ex-girlfriend persona, and morejust like youve been doing all along. The fact is that serial monogamy is now the norm. Consequently, theres no reason to keep looking upon it as some kind of repetitive failure pattern. Maybe we should just start regarding it as a flower pattern or paisley.

So, whether youre sticking it out in a halfhearted entanglement or jumping into the arms of the next emotional disaster to come along, just remember: whatever your justifications for choosing toxic, dysfunctional, or just long, difficult, and ultimately doomed relationships over fun, supportive, carefree love romps, an unbroken string of failed relationships will not earn you frequent flier miles, but it is not without rewards.

The world is a treasure trove of possibility. Perhaps you will inherit a million dollars someday and spend your life traveling to far-flung, exotic locations. Until that happens, however, why not make the most of traveling to exotic emotional states and flinging yourself face-first on the bed? After all, if it werent for so-called bad relationships, many of us would have no relationships at all.

Someday your prince will come. And if he doesnt, some other dude will. In the meantime, why not milk the drama for all its worth?

Oh, gallant was the first love, and glittering and fine;
The second love was water, in a clear white cup;
The third love was his, and the fourth was mine;
And after that, I always get them all mixed up.

DOROTHY PARKER

For my dad,
who was fond of the expression
To E.A.Ch. his own,
because those were his initials

Copyright 2003 by Carina Chocano

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Villard Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

VILLARD BOOKS and V CIRCLED DESIGN are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available

Villard Books website address: www.villard.com

eISBN: 978-0-679-64740-9

v3.0

About the Author

CARINA CHOCANO writes for Salon.com. Her work has also appeared in