The most important new year relationship resolution you’ll ever make

…if, like Franki Cookney, you won’t put up with being ‘breadcrumbed’ or ‘benched’ by your date, then there’s one thing you should do in 2024: communicate

Why not just be upfront about what we want? (Getty)

A few years ago I met a man. He slid into my DMs one day and we got chatting. After a while, I suggested we go for a drink. I was enjoying flirting and the logical thing to do, I thought, was to meet up in person. So I was baffled when, while not exactly turning me down, he just sort of… ignored the question.

This went on for several months. He would text me, I would reply, and at some point, I’d say “Shall we get that drink then?” He’d express interest but trying to make a plan was like pulling teeth. In the end, I’d let it go, assuming I’d read the room wrong. A few days would pass and then he’d be back with another question, “How was your weekend?” “What do you think of this article?” “Have you seen Russian Doll?” (it was 2019, okay?!)

Gen Z probably has a term for this kind of behaviour. Breadcrumbing, maybe. Benching, perhaps. But those terms only really make sense in the context of monogamy. When your relationship goal is to meet and “cuff” one person for a romantic and sexual relationship, any behaviour which skirts around the edges of this is going to be met with suspicion.

I’m not monogamous, and neither was this man. So why were we faffing about like this? Why not just be upfront about what we both wanted? Well, eventually that’s what I did. I told him I was enjoying chatting and I’d like to get to know him in person. I wasn’t looking for a pen pal. “What do you want from this?” I asked.

The response was inscrutable. I recall something vague about understanding my feelings but nothing that actually answered my question. I replied: “OK, thanks for clearing up the confusion.”

If that sounds sarcastic, it wasn’t meant to. In a way, he had cleared up the confusion. I don’t have time to try to forge relationships with people who can’t communicate. Still, I was exasperated. Ethical non-monogamy allows us to create bespoke relationships but we can’t even begin to explore that if we’re incapable of discussing what we want.

This dilemma is far from unique. Social progress, as well as exposure to a greater diversity of options means that, monogamous or not, many of us have ambitious ideas about our romantic relationships. But we lack the communication skills to realise them.

As sex and relationship therapist Esther Perel pointed out recently, we can end up defaulting to norms we don’t even really believe in, because we don’t know how to negotiate anything else.

“In the old days,” she said when she spoke at the Eventim Apollo in October, “there were strict social rules governing our romantic relationships. These days everything is up for negotiation.” But, she added, our communication skills have not kept up with cultural change. “We can shape our romantic relationships however we want, but we haven’t really got any better at talking about it all.”

Don’t I know it? And not just from my own experience, but from my monogamous friends who are just trying to have an open and healthy dialogue with potential partners.

One friend told me about a guy she’d been trying to hook up with whose texts were so erratic that she sometimes wondered if they were having the same conversation. They had been open about the fact that they were both looking for casual sex but even so, when it came to making plans, he floundered. “Let me know some dates that work for you!” she said at one point. A week passed. Then a single line: “We will do it!” and a winky face emoji. And maybe they would have, eventually. She didn’t stick around to find out.

It’s ironic that so many of us profess to be open-minded, sex-positive, and ready to re-write the relationship rules only to fall at the first hurdle.

Some 43 per cent of millennials say their ideal relationship would be ethically non-monogamous in some way, with Gen X not far behind.

Dating apps across the board report increased interest in non-traditional relationship styles. Even those looking for monogamy are likely to have different ideas about what that should look like and how it should progress.

But without the communication skills to back these ideas up, we are missing out on connections, falling back into old tropes, and relying on glib terminology to explain away the disappointment. And if we want to find harmony in 2024, we need to learn how to talk to each other.