Relationship researcher and journalist Amy Gahran popularised a term for the mindless momentum that pushes many couples toward marriage: the relationship escalator.

What is the relationship escalator?

This is a term that describes a relationship following a common path: Two people meet, there’s physical attraction and after a few dates, sex. They stop dating other people, and start saying “I love you”. The couple spends almost all their non-work time together, decide to move in together and start planning their future. Engagement and marriage follow, then merging finances, perhaps buying a house and having kids.

“It’s a well-known trajectory,” said Gahran, author of the book Stepping Off the Relationship Escalator: Uncommon Love and Life. “It’s the escalator, not the staircase, because it has so much external support and veneration and status and privilege, it kind of feels like it’s moving on by its own momentum.”

Gahran first encountered the term years ago among the polyamorous community in California. She immediately saw how the trajectory had defined relationships earlier in her life.

In her early 40s, she had been married in a traditional relationship that lasted for more than a decade. “I thought the escalator was my only option, even though it never really worked, even though it never really made me happy,” she said.

After she and her spouse amicably separated, Gahran began exploring and practising consensual non-monogamy. In 2012, she began blogging about her experience and wrote a post entitled “Riding the relationship escalator (or not)” that caused the term to explode into the public discourse.

“I never got so much traffic for a blog post in my life,” Gahran said.

Finding a different staircase

Gahran and other researchers are quick to say traditional relationships can be successful and the best fit for many people. But considering whether you’ve been riding the relationship escalator in your own life can prompt people – both monogamous and not – to have important conversations.

“You have to talk about what it is that you’re looking for, what kind of future you envision with one or more partners, and you will get so many different answers,” said Rebecca Rose Vassy, a sexuality and relationship coach at the Pincus Center for Inclusive Treatment and Education in Virginia.

Vassy notes people who don’t follow the escalator face stigma for diverging from the traditional model. The immediate response is like, “Why don’t you want these perfectly normal things that everybody should want?” Vassy said.

For people in consensual non-monogamous relationships, it’s the job of the individual to determine what they want and need from their relationships, and to agree with their partners on the commitments they will and won’t share. “One of the core things that we believe is that nobody can be everything to you and nobody is responsible for your happiness,” Vassy said.

A relationship ‘smorgasbord’

Vassy says an alternate model to the relationship escalator is the relationship “smorgasbord”. The concept has been bouncing around the consensual non-monogamous community for years. Here’s how it works.

Consider what commitment means to you: To understand what your smorgasbord looks like, start by writing down the things in your life that represent commitment. Examples include owning a pet together, taking shared vacations, giving someone a key to your home, listing each other as an emergency contact. Moving in together, having kids, merging finances all have a place in the smorgasbord.

Discuss the relationship you envision: The goal of the smorgasbord approach is to sit down with someone you’re dating and talk about the relationship you envision, what you’re available for and what won’t work. The practice will help you consider the wants and needs of the participants involved rather than being beholden to a predetermined series of steps.

Design your ideal relationship: Asking these difficult questions helps to intentionally define the parameters of a relationship – whether it’s monogamous or polyamorous or something else – based on the needs of the individuals involved.

Other ways to step off the relationship escalator

Gahran and other experts say being aware of the relationship escalator doesn’t mean you can’t stay on it. But the goal should be to design your relationship around what you want – rather than what’s culturally expected.

Duration doesn’t define relationship success: On the relationship escalator, successful relationships last until someone dies. But longevity doesn’t necessarily mean partners are emotionally satisfied. “The success of a relationship is not in its length,” Vassy said. “It is whether you were able to respect each other or your feelings and learn and grow together for a little while, and feel like, in some way, both of you were better off for having been together.”

Marriage doesn’t have to be the goal: Vassy leads workshops in a variety of specialisations including polyamory, queerness, gender identity, kink and neurodivergence. In her work, she often sees the question of marriage as a pressure point for people in monogamous relationships. “They’re like, ‘I’ve been seeing this guy for six months, and he hasn’t even brought up marriage. Should I break up with them?’” Vassy said.

She says this reaction would feel bizarre in the non-monogamous community where relationships tend to be less focused on marriage. “Why does this question of marriage have to determine whether or not you’re together?” she said. Better questions to ask might be: Are you having a good relationship? Do you make each other happy? Is there mutual respect that makes the relationship honest and fulfilling?

Relationships don’t have to be hard: In 2020, Boyle, the woman who was divorced a year after her wedding, started the blog Ready for Polyamory as a resource for people interested in non-monogamy. She says the same cultural messaging that pushes couples up the relationship escalator also drives people to believe that relationships are necessarily “hard work.”

“I get people coming forward to share stories of things where they were in relationships that felt extremely difficult for many years before they were able to leave,” Boyle said. “Relationships are work, but relationships should not feel hard all of the time.”