How to step off The Relationship Escalator

Imagine a relationship between you and your crush as a staircase. On the first step, you two are hanging out more. On the next step, you actually touch each other a little bit. The next step, you’re kissing, then the next step, you’re dating often, then staying the night at each other’s houses, then introducing each other to family and friends, then moving in together, buying furnicher together, getting married, having kids, buying a house together, planning a retirement, and so on.

This staircase is basically all the steps a relationship is supposed to become. If you’re on one step, then you’re basically expected to be working on moving toward the next step and altimately trying to get to the top. Which is this ideal of a happy married couple. Now instead of a staircase, imagine it’s an escalator. You get on the bottom and you’re in a relationship that is expected to automatically keep escalating and carring you to the top.

This is the relationships escalator. I first heard about this concept in the polyamorous book More Than Two and I love this analogy. I’ll leave a link to the book in the description.

I love this analogy because it describes the unspoken pressure to always push a relationship to be that next thing. It so clearly captures that idea that somehow we should all be looking to be at the top of the escalator because that’s what a successful couple looks like. Happiness and love are at the top of the escalator and so many of us have bought into the story that we need to race to that top of this thing to be happy and successful at love.

I used to believe this because this is what society and tv and movies all sold to me my whole life. I thought the goal of life was to find someone, get marries, settle down, and be happy. I believed this tale so strongly that I felt like being single was somehow a failure and something to feel shameful about. TV and movies made it seem pretty clear that without a happily ever after significant other, I was a loser.

Thank goodness I finally discovered the opposite is true. Step one, you can choose to be happy everyday regardless of who you are dating or how serious your relationship is. Step two, you can turn the escalator off and only climb the steps you want to. In fact, you can stay on any step as long as you want with any person and you can climb as many different staircases as you want or create as many staircases as you want. And life is amazing with this approach.

Here’s an example. I have a friend that I have a crush on that I sometimes cuddle with. I do mean cuddle. No sex. No groping. No kissing. And it’s wonderful. We enjoy being on this step of the staircase and there’s no pressure to escalate the relationship. I have a different friend who I also have a crush on and we go on dates and occasionally we get frisky, but it’s never a requirement and never expected. I also have a friend that I have a crush on who is monogamous. We are strictly friends, that’s the step that we are on. But my heart does flutter sometimes when I’m around her and that’s a pretty wonderful feeling. Finally, I have a crush that I used to get frisky with, but it was leading to a jealous situations with a third party, so we agreed to not be physical anymore. I value this friendship and I’m glad were able take a step down on the staircase and find the perfect spot for us.

Each of these relationships are successful. I have a wonderful cuddle buddy. I have a wonderful crush I’ll never pursue. I have a wonderful friend that I’m no longer physical with.
With all of these people, I’m savoring the step the individual relationships is on.