Will Baude advertantly highlights all that is wrong with America's romantic culture.

Serial monogamy? What ever happened to dating as a process, akin to winnowing out the chaff? What is wrong about dating more than one person at the same time? Note that I permit objections when there's fornicating or explicit promises involved, but let's look at this hypothetical:

You meet a nice person. You go on a date or two with this person. Things are going well, but you're not looking for commitment necessarily, or perhaps you want to survey other prospects. What is wrong with dating other people?

Answer: nothing. At all. Dating a person, even over a period of time, is not an explicit promise of romantic faithfulness or exclusivity. There are such guarantees: they're known as (to a lesser extent) getting engaged and (in theory to the ultimate degree) getting married.

Even these two kinds of promises often turn out to be far less effective at curbing infidelity than people who are neither engaged nor married but have been dating for years. Why is this? It's very simple: the social penalties for breaking engagements and divorce are no less severe than those for someone who dates more than one person at a time. Which is more heinous, to date more than one person at the same time, or to pursue infidelity when contracted to another?

Well, I know which I choose.