“I don’t want a long term relationship. Is there something wrong with me?”
- Zoe Grayston
- May 1
- 3 min read
Zoe Grayston runs The Grayston Clinic in Marlow, providing accredited award-winning Relationship Coaching to individuals, couples and organisations to resolve conflict, rebuild trust and create successful relationships at home and at work.
We will present Zoe with a question from you every month and ask her advice.
Zoe Grayston’s Answer:
First of all, no, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you! But it does make sense why you would wonder.
Society has conditioned us to believe that the world was built for two. We grow up with fairy tales, where the traditional Prince and Princess meet and live “happily ever after”, and most modern love stories nearly always depict a couple getting together, marrying and getting pregnant… but after that? What happens? We never get to see what happily ever after even looks like, or, most importantly, how to achieve it.
The pressure to have a relationship doesn’t just exist in fiction. There are millions of social media accounts dedicated to displays of relationship “bliss”, and whole industries exist due to the ‘Disney-fication’ of traditional relationships.
Religion and patriarchal legal structures have also had centuries to shape social norms, impacting the behavioural expectations of our parents and grandparents. It’s only in the last few decades that we have been allowed to consider if there even is an alternative?
But, there’s a further reason why we’re obsessed with love and marriage. It’s simply that finding the right person to spend our lives with can be one of the most wonderful experiences we ever get to enjoy, and that’s why we’re all so enthralled with the idea.
So I would ask you to really consider what it is that’s causing you to decide against the possibility of a long term relationship?
What people don’t talk about is how challenging long term relationships can be (which is probably why we don’t see the ‘ever after’ bit in fairy tales). Signing up to a lifetime with the wrong partner can result in devastating consequences for our health, wealth and well-being. With these potential risks, commitment can feel overwhelming.
Perhaps there are some past, or present, experiences that are creating emotional barriers for you? It may be that you don’t have any examples of successful long term relationships in your life - such as from your parents - to model your ideals upon? No one likes to feel vulnerable, so perhaps that level of dependency upon another person puts you off? Maybe it’s that long term commitment and monogamy don’t suit the way you wish to live your life, or that simply you are very happy on your own and you wish you didn’t have to keep explaining that to everyone!
No matter what the results of your exploration reveal, I can categorically tell you that no, there is nothing wrong with you!
You don’t have to sign up to a long term relationship, if you don’t want to.
You don’t have to stay in a long term relationship, because you think you have to.
And, you don’t have to have a long term relationship because your friends, family and wider society think you have to.
The important thing is to just be honest and direct with any potential partners about your expectations from a relationship. If you aren’t in it for the long haul, tell them straight away.
Please don’t stay in a relationship that makes you miserable, and most importantly, don’t be responsible for making someone else miserable.
Someday you might meet someone that changes how you feel about commitment, who makes you want to invest your energy in them, but it’s also more than ok if you don’t.
For now, I hope you can enjoy each day as it comes, and my suggestion is to change the question from“is there something wrong with me?”, to “am I living kindly, honestly, and in a way that makes me happy?”.
Connect with Zoe if you need expert help or advice with a relationship problem.
t: +44 203 332 2025
© The Grayston Clinic, 2026
