“When are you going to settle down?” “What are your intentions with dating?” “Do you think this is the real thing?” Our cultural expectations around relationships, and the ways we reinforce them with each other, often flow from an unspoken assumption that there’s a single desirable, authentic, “correct” direction for a relationship to head, and that we should evaluate all our romantic connections on the basis of whether or not they fit the bill. What if this wasn’t as true as we think it is? What if there are other ways to approach relationships, and none of them are particularly right or particularly wrong? These are the questions opened up by the concept of the relationship escalator, and what happens if you step off of it.

What’s a relationship escalator?

The concept of a relationship escalator is linked to the often-unquestioned assumption that relationships should progress linearly, ideally culminating in a commitment like marriage, living together and/or having children together. It underpins the idea of a relationship “going somewhere” or not — and the implication that relationships or connections that aren’t “going somewhere” are lesser or even harmful or duplicitous, i.e. a “situationship” being a waste of your time, or that someone who wants to date but isn’t looking to marry is “using you” or “playing games.”

Here’s the definition as conceptualized by Amy Gahran, who coined the term when describing relationship expectations in her blog Solo Poly:

Relationship Escalator: The default set of societal customs for the proper conduct of intimate relationships. Progressive steps with clearly visible markers and a presumed structural goal of permanently monogamous (sexually and romantically exclusive), cohabitating marriage — legally sanctioned if possible. The social standard by which most people gauge whether a developing intimate relationship is significant, “serious,” good, healthy, committed or worth pursuing or continuing.

The relationship escalator as Gahran describes it has seven steps, moving from first initiating contact (flirting, asking someone out) to becoming exclusive and using relationship labels like “girlfriend” or “partner” to commitment steps like buying a house, having kids, and getting married.

Why wouldn’t I want to be on a relationship escalator?

To be clear, none of the steps on the “relationship escalator” are bad or something to be avoided! If you and your dates both want to move toward being exclusive, or if marriage is an important goal for you and part of how you manage your priorities when dating, nothing about that needs to change. There are no wrong things to want when it comes to sex & dating; the goal is just to be clear about what they are with both yourself and others. 

While there’s no problem with deciding intentionally you want the milestones on a relationship escalator, the effects of having the relationship escalator as the only paradigm for the shape of relationships can be thorny. It can create expectations that incentivize us (and others in our lives) to focus more on whether we’re doing things “right” than whether we’re actually happy and our needs are being met. In a culture that over-emphasizes the necessity of the relationship escalator, we may feel pressured to end a connection that’s actually completely satisfying to both us and our date just because it isn’t “progressing” in the way we were taught to expect. And of course, we all know people who have checked off all the “correct” boxes of marriage, monogamy and stability while being deeply unhappy in their relationships (or have even been these people ourselves). 

The point of looking critically at the relationship escalator isn’t to force anyone to throw it out entirely, but to invite all of us to question what we want our relationship with it to be. Although it’s a popular and culturally prized paradigm for relationships, it isn’t the only one, and you’re allowed (and encouraged!) to decide whether you want to be on it or not every time you make a new connection.

What are the options if I don’t want to be on a relationship escalator?

For many of us, we’re not opposed to the idea of stepping off the relationship escalator, but it can be confusing to think about how to do so if we have no other models or paradigms for how relationships can look. 

This may be especially true for non-monogamous or polyamorous people, for whom the relationship escalator doesn’t necessarily scale or make sense — it’s not realistic or even desirable to have the same relationship structure that progresses at the same pace with multiple partners. Each partner may have a different role in your life, or your relationship structure may be uniquely structured to fit a relational need you both have — but on the relationship escalator, all relationships should be shaped the same way and suggest partnership should always look the same. 

Even for monogamous folks, there may be relationship structures or approaches that you find more fulfilling than a relationship escalator — these may be structures that are dismissed in the broader culture or imagined as failed attempts at having a “real” relationship, like a “situationship” or “friends with benefits.” As Gahran puts it, the relationship escalator also only moves in one direction: “Partners aren’t allowed to step back (or aside) to a phase with less structure, or with a different structure. Your only valid options are to keep moving forward or to break up and start over with a new partner.” What if (at least some) major differences in wants & needs could be resolved without having to break up?

For both monogamous and non-monogamous people, there are abundant and diverse examples of what relationships can look like off the escalator once you start to look for them (and talk to others in your life openly about this concept). Some that come to mind might be:

• A long-distance relationship between two people who have no plans to move closer to each other
• Two same-sex “roommates” who live together without coming out to their families or jobs
• A casual connection where both people choose to keep seeing each other indefinitely without ever getting more serious or committed
• A married couple who chooses to live in separate homes or apartments
• A non-monogamous person who dates and coparents with multiple partners but has no one “nesting partner” they live with
• A couple who moves in together and then chooses to live separately again when conflict arises from living together rather than breaking up
• A couple who does break up, but chooses to remain close friends 
• A married couple who no longer feel sexual and/or romantic connection but decide to remain together and share a household, with or without seeing other people
• A “comet” relationship where two people have primary partners but see each other a few times a year when they’re in the same city
• A single parent who parents alone but dates multiple people casually, without the intention of letting them meet their kids or ever co-parenting

Do any of these sound familiar, or appealing? Do they sound impossible or far-fetched? If so, why? Stepping off the relationship escalator isn’t a requirement for anyone, but imagining other possibilities is one way to make it more likely that you’re actively choosing the relationship progression you see with partners rather than being carried along with it as a matter of course.

Recommended Books:

Stepping Off the Relationship Escalator

Love in a F*cked-Up World

Rewriting the Rules

 

For More Articles Check Out These Recent Posts:

How to Rekindle the Spark in Your Gay Relationship

Is Your Relationship Ready for Marriage?

Are You and Your Partner Ready to Move In Together?

 

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