"Love manuals are evil"

Salon columnist Carina Chocano talks about her new book, "Do You Love Me, or Am I Just Paranoid?"

By Heather Havrilesky

Jan 28, 2003 | When I first met Carina Chocano -- whose first book, "Do You Love Me, or Am I Just Paranoid?: The Serial Monogamist's Guide to Love," was published this month -- we were in our early 20s, both of us recovering from major breakups with live-in boyfriends. We shared a flat in the Upper Haight in San Francisco and had lots of empowering late-night talks about staying true to ourselves and staying single for as long as possible. Before too long, though, we were both involved with new boyfriends. Then, a few years later, we went through more breakups, followed by a new round of boyfriends.

This pattern has continued over the past 10 years, with the two of us cycling through boyfriends about as often as the average person visits the dentist. Today, Carina lives a few blocks from me in Los Angeles, and we have lots of empowering late-night talks about staying true to ourselves and staying single for as long as possible. Thus, when Salon asked if I thought my interviewing Carina about her new book on serial monogamy would be inappropriate, I said that I couldn't think of anything more appropriate.

So Carina and I met at our favorite overpriced Los Feliz diner and tried very hard to discuss her new book with the dignified solemnity of professionals, rather than be swept away on our usual manic torrent of self-involved digressions. Instead of daintily picking away at salads Vanity Fair-style, we opted for a moodier combination of triple lattes and pancakes filled with chocolate chips and little marshmallows.

Is serial monogamy a trend, a cultural phenomenon, a paradigm, a rite of passage, or a triple-tough stain of coffee, tobacco and cherry pie on the proverbial dentures of our society?

All of the above. The only difference is that you cannot eradicate serial monogamy with baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. As a stain, it's very stubborn. As a trend, it's very trendy. As a rite of passage, it's the closest thing we have to one of those funny rituals in which young singles cover their bodies in paint and try to impress each other by dancing around, spears aloft, or get married off to a suitable stranger in exchange for livestock.

In our culture, we don't have clear rites of passage like those. Or rather we do, but you have to get cast in a reality show to be able to participate. So I think it's encouraging that we have developed our own rituals, i.e., the practice of bouncing from one relationship to the next. And there's no reason to look at it as some sort of dysfunctional repetition compulsion, either. Looked at from another angle (if you squint and make your eyes go sort of unfocused and blurry), it's not unlike reincarnation. You must strive to improve yourself in each of your love lives, or wind up being reincarnated as a bitter, angry parasite.

Why do you think so many people these days are serial monogamists?

In this day and age, we have a tendency to commit early and commit often. I think this has something to do with this thing we all learned in therapy about relationships being work. If relationships really are work, then the pay is really horrible, and maybe it's time we all started thinking about the advantages of going on unemployment.

The problem with the love-as-work model is that it's sometimes hard to determine what the exact job description is. Also, the start date can be confusing. A lot of people start "working" on their relationships as early as the first week. Anybody who has ever had a job knows that this is not a good sign. The first week should consist entirely of obtaining fun supplies from the supply closet, sitting around pretending to look busy, and calling all your friends on company time to rub their noses in it.

Although your book has "Guide" in the title, would you say it's more of an anti-guide or a reaction to the typical man-hunting guides on the market?

The original idea was to parody love manuals, because they are evil. They manufacture fear, then present themselves as the antidote to fear. My book wound up being a guide to having bad relationships. We all have them, so the book should make you feel like you're doing something right. Relationships are hard, but they're also really funny, when you think about them years later, once the rage has subsided.

Any ideas of how a person can break the pattern of serial monogamy?

There are only two ways known to man. The first is to cling tenaciously to a mental image of your ideal mate and reject all opportunities for love until the spitting image of your mental image magically appears. This method is also known as chastity. The second is to avoid formulating any mental image at all when entering into a relationship, and then form the image retroactively. It depends on whether if by "break the pattern" you mean "Keep whatever relationship you have together at all costs," or you mean "Never go out with anyone ever again."

I think I alternate between those two approaches, but I still end up a card-carrying serial monogamist. So maybe trying to break the pattern is the best way to ensure that the pattern is never broken.

Maybe we should start our own Serial Monogamist Sect, and at meetings we can sing, "May the Pattern Be Unbroken." Sort of like "Little House on the Prairie." But different.

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