Monkey-Roped

Back in grad school, I took a high ropes course with my fellow residence life staffers. I was a residence director for a co-ed, upperclassmen hall. All the RDs and RAs were participating. For those of you who don't know, high ropes is an obstacle course that's about 40 feet in the air. It's a teambuilding exercise, designed to instill trust and closeness in a team. It usually starts with you climbing an unsteady rope ladder onto a slim beam of wood suspended between two trees. That's the easy part. There are obstacles that require partners to get you through it (thus the trust-building), and other areas where you're on your own and must draw on the encouragement of others to get through.

One part, which they called the "Monkey Ropes," requires you to slide your feet along nothing more than a rope while you grab another rope hanging vertically in front of you with both hands. As you stand there, your legs shaking and praying you don't lose your balance, you must release one hand, lean over, and grab the next rope for stability. Only then can you release your other hand from the first rope and move forward. Think of a monkey swinging from vine to vine in a jungle and maybe you'll get the picture.

I was talking to a friend last night, and I think I might have coined a new phrase for a relationship strategy so common it's practically universal. I call it "Monkey-Roping," where you won't let go of one relationship until you're fairly confident you have another one to go to. It happens all the time.

Certainly I can't be so original! Convinced I wasn't the first person to conjure this metaphor, I googled the phrase and came up with nothing. Excellent!

This is the strategy we've come to use in our professional lives, where we change careers five to ten times in our lifetimes. The preferred method is to have the next job lined up before we leave the one we have. And I think we've allowed ourselves to carry that principle into our personal lives, where, just like our jobs, nothing is permanent and loyalty can be both fickle and fleeting.

If you've been the victim of monkey-roping...where your significant other breaks it off with you because he/she has another relationship lined up, you've been "monkey-roped."

I must say, this is perhaps the cruellest of relationship strategies for the hapless victim. You can be dating the biggest loser known to man, but guaranteed, he or she will have someone waiting in the wings the second the relationship ends. While out with friends the next night trying to forget the jerk who made your life miserable, in the happy couple walks, giddy and acting as if they finally met "The One."

What is so genius about this strategy is that it's usually you, the victim, who chose to end it. The "monkey-roper," as it were, makes life intolerable by checking out of the relationship, breaking dates or not showing up at all, or just being the biggest asshole or bitch known to mankind -- which, if whoever is waiting behind door #2 even knows about you, only serves to give your soon-to-be ex-lover an alliance against you. You're the bitch...or the asshole, as it were, when it's THEM who has put you in his/her back pocket until someone better comes along.

The monkey-ropers are different from cheaters. They don't officially start the relationship until they've made you miserable enough to dump them. But they've been laying the groundwork for months. You suspect something's up. Your partner has "mentionitis," where your soon-to-be replacement crops up in the most innocent of conversations.

You: "You know, I just don't get why cereal has to be so sweet!"
Him: "Megan only eats cereal where sugar isn't listed in the first five ingredients."

You: "That movie really sucked."
Him: "Megan only eats cereal where sugar isn't listed in the first five ingredients."

To my knowledge, I've never been cheated on, but I've been monkey-roped more times than I care to count. Seemingly out of nowhere, attention is replaced by attrition. Closeness is replaced by withdrawal. You didn't see it coming, but there it is. He's unavailable. She's mentioning this person all the time. And the most infuriating part is that when you confront them with your suspicions, they become sanctimonious, indignant that you would dare question their fidelity or loyalty.

And while you're the one who chooses to end it, you're also the one left feeling as if your insecurity, irrationality, or suspcicious nature (which you never had before) drove them away and into the arms of another.

It's as if you were the one who was dumped. Because, with a monkey-roper, you always are.