I'm trying to do something different than either of those two options, with mixed results
I approach a "serious/monogamous relationship" like a gambler, essentially, like a factored in result, the more I spend with more people, the closer we get, the more likelihood the possibility exists I will end up there, and I'll try to manage it the best I can, my feelings, hers, what we both want, whatever.
but I also really am not that interested in one. What I have zeroed in the last few years, in a single word, is domesticity. I have extremely limited tolerance for it, and that comes with almost all the above. Because, in my thinking, we are all patterning our view of relationships with marriage, and in a lot of ways with marriages of the last 50 years or so.
so I'm trying to have real friendships and relationships, and date, and have sex, without much of that kind of commitment, and being mostly honest about it. Theres a convo from a book I like, (In The Cut, it's almost like erotic fiction) where a man essentially tells a woman, "Here's what I can do for you:....". It's a harder sell than I thought it would be. I'm not really interested in app hookups or spending all night in a club to have some awkward sex at 5:00 AM. I don't want to commit much more than one or two nights a week, to any of this, don't want to be messaging on apps, scrolling a blur of photos.