The Selective Amnesia of Serial Monogamy
One woman's attempt to rehab a fractured identity by retracing her relationships
Names are redacted for confidentiality (aka “Salvatore” always seems to find out when I write about him, and I don’t feel like fielding that phone call). If you enjoy this, maybe you will consider upgrading from free to paid, or sharing in your group chats.
How many versions of yourself have been molded in the reflection of lovers?
The first time I asked myself this, I put my identity in time out. I felt suspicious as hell of those sometimes brown, sometimes green eyes in the mirror. The way they change in different light, I began to wonder if they always did that, or if I’d just unlocked a new human adaptation to attract a mate. Like some guy, somewhere, post-coitus told me there was a speck of green in my eyes that he liked, and my eyes just leaned into that and never stopped.
I’ve long labeled myself a serial monogamist. I don’t know whether that’s actually true, or if it’s just that social media documentation collapses time and makes everyone feel stacked on top of each other. For continuity’s sake, we’ll call it gospel.
When my brother-in-law died in January, my ex Rob was one of the first people I told. We hadn't had a meaningful conversation in years beyond weird, one-off advice on cryptocurrency, yet there I was, frantically texting him as if he might have the words to revive someone from a premature heart attack. It was clear to me that this wasn’t grief awakening some primal return to his arms—that this was merely a trauma response after having been together through my sister’s death in 2018. But upon seeing Rob at the service, my partner wondered the inevitable: did I miss him? Were old feelings unearthed? I was taken aback with genuine naïveté. Four years forged a distance between Rob and I. I felt nothing, vast and haunting as the silence that fills a room at 3 AM.
Was this normal? Had my memory been erased?
I started thinking about all my exes hoping for a whisper of emotion, proof that I wasn’t on neurological decline, that these relationships I’ve held so formative and dear did, indeed, happen. Nothing really sparked.
Serial monogamy lends itself to selective amnesia, i.e. I cannot, for the life of me, remember one single moment of our years-long relationship, but I can remember the girl who listened to Nine Inch Nails and shot pistols at empty milk cartons off the porch of your dad’s double-wide trailer. Faces and voices blur into one composite “boyfriend” while each iteration of Dia builds upon the last, fortifying into something powerful, more dynamic… or at least more interesting at parties. She is both country and cosmopolitan, terminally chill and the last person you’d want to find hovering over you while you’re sleeping. If I couldn’t remember my boyfriends, I was determined to recover the versions of myself shaped in their image.
Brody was my second serious relationship but the first of any real meaning or expectation. We met when I was a senior in high school and he, a freshman at Penn State. I had never seen anything like him, a guy so clean cut and good on paper but carefree as the day is long. He had rich brown hair and brown eyes and Greek skin and sometimes strangers thought we were brother and sister. Brody was quick. He knew how to read a room, which is to say he immediately and mysteriously understood the unique humor of everyone in a crowd and always managed to find the one joke that could make everyone howl. It was magical the way we bounced off of each other. Brody was funny and smart, so I became funnier and smarter. With him, I loved Led Zeppelin, Penn State Football, driving back roads, drive-in movies. I shopped at Gap. Ballet flats and cardigans, nothing too flashy or trendy (Brody hated that stuff). Brody thought drugs were an abhorrent waste of one’s brain and so I did, too. Together we would be conventionally successful. We would attend lots of weddings in central Pennsylvania barns, have three children and a two-car garage.
Brody and I stayed together for over three years. Ultimately I got bored, less with Brody than who I was with him. It was my first brush with this specific type of sadness: to admire someone so much you become them, and then outgrow them like a school uniform. It’s a testament to the dubious selfhood of youth. I was 21 and anxious to see the world, to become a cultured urbanite with a graduate degree and Manolo Blahniks in every color. It didn’t help that I was horny for everyone who flirted with me.
I was at a bar in downtown Bloomsburg the night I met Rob. He was something of local folklore, this long, lithe, mustached-before-it-was-cool-to-be-mustached bad boy archetype. He wore LRG and Jordans, five panel hats in Hawaiian print with Nike SB Janoskis. He had long hair that dreaded on its own and a voice like honey that dripped down from his 6’3 to my 5’4. To capture Rob’s attention was to hold time itself in your hands. He was cool in that way that really cool people can’t help being anything but. Everyone said I’d never get him. And so I had to have him. I was about to graduate, taking the GREs to attend Syracuse University for a Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy. I was still the same wholesome spawn of Brody, hopeful about my future and ignorant to the dark indulgences of my peers. That all went out the window when I met Rob. With Rob, fun was the only imperative. Partying was how you bucked a system designed to keep you down. Such was the philosophy of a man who dropped out of college with one semester left, who chain-smoked 27s and wore a spoon around his neck. I never did go to Syracuse for that Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy. Instead, Rob held my hand down a path of self-destruction. We’d buy an eight ball on a Monday, hit the road for a music festival on a Wednesday and by that very Wednesday, we’d need another goddamn eight ball. I listened to Skrillex and wore backwards hats. Spoke bro talk, each fragmented thought a graveyard of “dude”s and “yo”s. I was doing so much cocaine, MDMA, and adderall that my brain could no longer functionally interpret reality. I started having daily panic attacks at work wondering why there weren’t colored lasers and deep bass playing at my desk, scrambling for a hit of serotonin.
Years flew by with Rob and before I knew it, I was 25. Things slowed down between us, all the white powders and nights that bled into sunrise. When we stopped burning the candle at both ends and became a Normal Couple, I realized how much my attachment to our relationship depended on partying—on the version of myself that existed on dance floors. There was no romance between us. We’d go full months without sex. My resentment culminated when I asked him, after 4+ years together, when my birthday was, and he said, “June something.” My birthday is July 8th.
I started quietly applying to jobs in cities, desperate to escape the aftermath of our whirlwind partnership. Neglect planted a seed of hope in my heart for cliche, cinematic love. I’d lose full days fantasizing about what it’d be like to date someone who took me to quaint cafes and made love in the afternoon sunlight. Someone with whom I’d tipsily trip down cobblestone into used bookstores, stealing gazes between the shelves. I was barely in Philly a month before I met precisely that.
I knew of Salvatore before getting to Philly. Sometimes I wonder if knowing he existed was part of my motivation for moving. He was a friend of a friend who worked at a now defunct online publication—a sort of Buzzfeed for college kids. My friend sent me a piece he wrote about Mysteryland, an electronic music festival in New York that he’d set out to cover Gonzo-like on LSD. That alone enticed me. I didn’t know guys like that existed after 1979—guys who partied like me, but who were smart and driven toward something creative that would stand the test of time in a world of short-term buzz. One of my first weekends in Philly, he texted me asking if I was going out. It was game over on the Dolphin dance floor. We had sex that night. The next morning we took a shower together and went to brunch where I learned, with breathtaking quickness, that I’d do just about anything for 30 seconds with this man. The thing about guys who speak multiple languages and read 70 books in a single summer and spit Gucci Mane bars as quickly as Radiohead lyrics is that even their biggest, most glaring red flags are dwarfed by the adrenaline rush of getting their attention. Of being theirs. Of holding hands en route to the subway each morning, forehead kisses while you wait for whole milk lattes. You share a belief in full-fat dairy with European fervor. They will spell both of your names wrong on the cups.
With Salvatore, I was the French film muse. I was sultry, refined. I ate tasting menus and drank wine in the park. Everything between us was romance in a glass bottle, slick with each other’s sweat, laughing like maniacs in thrifted sweaters. Salvatore taught me that the climax of the movie is when the obsessive Italian girlfriend gets cheated on by the shady Italian boyfriend, who was never subtle in his unquenchable thirst for outside pussy, anyway. How many times we cut the cord only to reconnect over the years, I lost count. And still, I can barely recall the details of our fights, the heat of our sex. Only the version of myself who, to this day, would bleed for the kind of artful romance he gifted me, despite a bad wrap job.
Perhaps my current relationship feels so honest because I got all those different Dias out of my system. He showed up in my life when I was finally able to put the pieces together: a mosaic of a woman weathered by loves so varied and extreme, the final product is strong in the way mutts are healthier than purebred dogs. Nonetheless, I bend to his spell. Who I am in love will always be an appendage. I’ve stolen his favorite rappers, jackets that don’t fit him anymore. He reads my books. We speak a language only we understand.
Amazing piece and so relatable. I especially liked the part about admiring someone and becoming them, only to outgrow them like a school uniform. It can be such a challenge though to dig into and stand in who you are within a relationship. You meld a bit and imprint on each other. It’s almost inevitable. But the journey is not of two combined entities, just two people sharing an experience. This allows growth for both of you.
I enjoyed your essay a lot. I have a question.
You used the term "dolphin dance", perhaps as a euphemism for intercourse. I have been saying that for years, and nobody gets it. I searched the web and there is no trace of this usage. My hazy recollection is that it came from a Tom Robbins novel. How did you come to use this term? Obviously I'm a fan.