Can't conceive of serial monogamy

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Although some people only have one partner their whole life, the most common way for humans to have partners is serial monogamy. They have a relationship, it ends (after a short or long time) and then that relationship is completely over and the two people often don't even stay in touch, or if they have to because they have kids, it's often uncomfortable, and then they just move on to another relationship, and maybe that one too will end, and they move on to another.

I cannot conceive of that. If I love someone, it's forever. If that relationship ends (because the other person wants it to, because I never would, unless maybe I realize the relationship was a mistake from the beginning or I realize the other person is not who I thought they were, but these are all hypotheticals because it has never happened), I still love that person, forever. I can get into another relationship, but I will not stop loving the first person, I will just add to the people I love by loving the second one too, and so on.

How do people just shed someone they love? To me a long-term relationship is the same as family. I'm not going to suddenly decide I no longer love my mother or father or sister or nephew. That would be horrific. (Unless there's something very serious happening, like abuse, but that has never happened to me, and my understanding is that even if people have to become estranged from family members who are abusive they often continue to love them, and sometimes they will try to still have some kind of relationship while protecting themselves from being traumatized and hurt.) But barring something extreme like that, I can't imagine withdrawing my love and stop loving someone.

Which means that just about all relationships that people have are incomprehensible to me. And that it's very difficult to form a new relationship when the new person feels threatened or confused by the deep love I still feel for a previous partner or partners.

I've read that autists are very loyal and devoted. And inflexible to the point perhaps of being unable to change one's feelings? Is this what that is?

I can't wrap my head around serial monogamy either, though my reasons are different than yours. I'm poly by nature, though capable of being monogamous when a partner I value requires it for their sense of security. I look at it like this.. I have multiple children. I never loved my oldest less when my next child came along and so on. Care for one person doesn't somehow take away or deplete my ability to care for another. I think it's crazy that people seem to think it does. If I say I'm there for someone, value them, respect them, care for them...then I mean it. No one else can take away from that. I have the capacity in me to value more than one person at a time. It seems weird to me that others cannot grasp that concept or that it would hurt them. Further, the people we've been invested in in the past shape who we are in the present. I wouldn't want someone I was with to forget or stop having feeling for someone who mattered to them because that person helped make them the amazing person they are today. I find it all rather bizarre that people get so bent out of shape over such things.

I can change my feelings. I am twice divorced for a reason. I no longer care for those people in the same ways as I once did. But for me, my mental health and wellbeing was more important to me than staying with the person and sucking up the continual hurt. I will never forget those people and will always know on what made them amazing to me once, but those seasons are over now and I'm at peace with that. I guess it was easy for me to move on because of those sorts of circumstances...or maybe harder, depending on your perspective. But I think I'd be annoyed by anyone who would not appreciate the impact my past relationships have had on me, for better or worse. Is it autism that makes me think this way? I dunno. But I think it's realistic. The past does shape our present and we can't deny that. My two cents.

I get what you guys mean. I still love both my exes but I know that we are better off not being in each others lives. We broke up because we both had various issues & there's too much bad history for me to get back together with either of them if I suddently became single again & had the opprotunity to. If I could go back in time I would off myself before getting in my first relationship so I would not have caused the problems for her or made her problems worse. Realistically I know the best I can do is to try & learn from things so the problems won't repeat. My current relationship is going well for the most part & learning from the experience of my previous two relationships is partly why. That said, I also get why a partner might feel insecure or jelly about it. I know I talk about my exes a lot in this section but I don't talk about them or bring them up a lot with my current gf. She's cool about me mentioning them & I'm cool about her mentioning her exes. However constantly talking about my exes would give the impression that I will never move on & will always constantly compare them to my current gf or future relationship partners. I think lots of people still love, care about, & think about their exes but don't want to admit it for similar reasons.

I've had serial monogamy and shed people from my life, but I didn't really love them. I thought I did for short periods of time but they became abusive, and I was with them because of codependence, or fear, or even for legal reasons like not being able to get them the f**k out of my house.

The people I have truly loved have been "forever" as you describe and those feelings don't end. I'm loyal to a fault and very honest in my relationships like you describe for other autistic people. I've never had to "move on" and forget about someone. My partner is a widower so he had to "move on" to a certain extent in grief although it's still a big part of his life. He still goes to therapy for bereavement, so that helps him to be able to love us both.

Females in a group synchronise their cycle. Or in other words, some female's cycle changes, while one will not. The one who doesn't is the alpha female. When the alpha female is ovulating, all the other females have to be ready to mate. So by nature's design, the alpha female chooses the alpha male. When she is ready all of them should be ready so that they can all conceive at the same time.

As much as we would like to think we are human, monogamy was never in our animalistic design. So alpha male couldn't even be monogamous even if they tried. That leaves all the non alpha males at the bottom of the food chain. I'm sad for both male and female. Males if not alpha will forever be at the bottom and lower ranking females will forever be toeing the line of the alpha female.

So I see serial monogamy as some way to play by the rules of "society".

anthropomorphising what we see in nature is apparently bad. But humans have these sophisticated mannerisms that when zoomed out seems pretty much just like the ordinary mammal going about their usual business.

You can conceive of serial monogamy, because it exists in the world and you see it every day with your own two eyes.

Without serial monogamy it is not likely civilizations would have been formed, and we would still be living in caves.

I think you mean to say either (i) you don't understand serial monogamy or (ii) serial monogamy is not just for you.

If you don't want to hear it from me, maybe a female neuroscientist will convince you.

By the way, the hijacking of this thread into a discussion about synchronized periods is the most Wrong Planety thing I can imagine.

You didn’t hijack the thread.

Me & my first gf tried to remain friends after our breakup since we were best friends before we got together but we were having fights a lot. We were both kinda angry about things & she had various issues she was dealing with that caused me to feel protective of her while we were together & I still felt protective of her after we broke up. I ended up tourching the bridge I had with her by fighting which was good because it made it eadier for me to move on.