You will be someone's non-primary partner during this journey. This will happen if you are searching for a primary and when you have your own primary (if that's your goal). You need to think about it, and decide if that's ok with you. I hate the word secondary partner, but that's the word some people use.

Most people who desire relationship escalator type relationship milestones like:

• Cohabitation
• Shared finances
• Legal marriage
• Having kids together
• Shared financial responsibilities for shared retirement planning

Decide that they can only realistically commit to do those things with one person or make an active choice to do them with only one person. Not everyone, but many people.

And that's not insulting, or degrading to others, or unfair.

And you already have plenty or non-primary partner relationships. We all do. Almost all human relationships fall into the "not primary partner" category.

I have a primary partner. We plan to buy a house together and retire together. We have financial commitments to each other that can't be offered to others. So we have limits to what others can expect us to commit to with them.

Everyone else is my non-primary partner.

My mom, my dad, my life long best friend, all my friends, and any other partners. Everyone I ever meet and have any kind of relationship with from now on out is my non-primary.

Those relationships are still valid, loving (sometimes romantic love and sometimes friend/family love), intimate, often long-term, often committed and very much an integral part of my life. I just probably won't buy a house with any of these people or share finances with them. That's ok. I can't offer to that everyone and don't want to.

I probably won't marry or have kids with anyone, even my primary. Because everyone has limits on what they offer. Even in monogamy. Even in a primary partnership. That's ok.

It does hurt if you meet someone and want more of those things with them than have to offer. But the key is not automatically expect that all dating and partnerships will eventually escalate to the traditional partnership milestones that we default to in monogamy.