5 Reasons Why You Need to Get Over Serial Monogamy

There's an endless stream of love songs talking about how love gives you wings, makes you burst with happiness and act in ways you didn't know you could. That's because love stimulates dopamine and oxytocin production in the human brain, literally giving you a high, similar to drugs.

And it can be very easy to crave that high all the time. Not to mention the comfort and security that come with a long-term relationship. Turns out being addicted to love is an actual thing. But like everything in the world, too much of a good thing can quickly turn sour.

You end up in the same cycle of mistakes

Even if you don't realize it, jumping from relationship to relationship without taking a moment for yourself can have long-lasting negative effects. Fresh off a breakup is not the time to seriously start dating someone new. Rushing into a new relationship doesn't allow for time to process where exactly things went wrong in the previous relationship, and you can easily end up making the same mistakes again.

You don't give yourself to get to know yourself (again)

It may be cliche to say, but change is the only constant. But if you're constantly jumping from relationship to relationship, you're not allowing for time for introspection, especially on unhealthy traits. After all, it's easy to ignore the less than stellar parts of your personality where there's constantly another person to focus on.

You don't hold yourself accountable

We all have ugly parts on the inside and it's important for long-term, sustainable happiness to be aware of them. Just as important is acknowledging all the ways you've grown, how priorities and goals have evolved. Not realizing how what you want and need from a significant other has evolved can be a source of deep unsatisfaction that undermines a relationship.

But if you're not aware of how you yourself are contributing to your own unhappiness or frustration, you'll end up blaming it all on your partner and give yourself an excuse to leave the relationship, with no lesson learned.

You fall in love with love, not the person you're dating

If you're mainly focused on not being single, it's easy to fall in love with the idea of someone, rather the person themselves. That's deeply unfair to the person you're involved with, since you're not with them for all the ways they're special to you. You are with them to be in love, to be involved. Essentially, that makes them interchangeable and easily replaceable.

You're quick to compromise to avoid single life

When you're committed to not being single, it's easy to gloss over the incompatibilities of your partner. Being different adds spice and excitement to a relationship, but if you're so different that you have different goals and expectations from both your relationship and life, then something's got to give.

If your main goal is to be with someone, you'll soon find yourself molding yourself and your dreams around that person. Whatever you want takes second place and soon falls to the side and you start living life on their terms not your own and as a result you loose your own identity in the relationship.

Moreover you end being constantly defined by the person you're with. That's not only unhealthy on a personal development level, but socially risky as well. After all, if you always change to you mold yourself around your partner, you become unreliable to your friends and family and may soon find yourself without a social safety net.