It sounds to me like you’re approaching the issue from the outside, as in what would be lost for those who have no examples in other people’s relationships.

It’s a good point, but I don’t think we ever really get a real look at any relationship from the outside. I think the best way to fix this is really to be in multiple relationships over the course over your life, culminating in one longer, final one.

You don’t really know yourself in a relationship, or what’s specific to your relationship but not all relationships, until you’ve been in at least two. For example, you might think: “We keep getting annoyed by little things the other does.” And in your first relationship, you might think that means it’s a bad relationship. If you’re just listening to other people complain about it in their relationships, you might think they have a bad relationship. But if you’ve been in a couple long-term relationships yourself, you know that’s just how things are. Little things that are slightly annoying become more annoying when they’re being repeated across years.

I don’t think we should treat partners as learning experiences, but I do think it’s healthy to be in multiple relationships over the course of a life, so that you can understand what is just natural/normal in a relationship, and where a particular relationship deviates from that.

Great comment!