Imagine only having sex with the same person time and time again. Welcome to a long-term relationship. Being in a relationship is hard. It’s great — but it’s not easy to stay committed to one person over a considerable length of time; like anything worth having it takes work.

“I consider it a significant achievement to have a relationship that has outlasted my Amazon Prime free trial”

I have been in a monogamous relationship now for 2 years, 8 months and 13 days (not that I’m keeping count). Realistically, this is not a long amount of time in the scheme of things. The Queen’s reign has lasted a long time; tinned tomatoes last for a long time; the several-year-old hard boiled sweets in the Varsity offices take an incredibly long time to dissolve in my mouth, each time I make the mistake of having one. In comparison to all these, my relationship has not lasted for long. But, in our current landscape of ‘swipe-rights’ and getting left on read, I consider it a significant achievement to have a relationship that has outlasted my Amazon Prime free trial. So, as we approach another milestone together, I’ve decided to reflect on our secrets to success.

My partner makes me seriously deliriously happy. Yuck, right. However, for at least the first two years of our relationship I struggled with feeling guilty: guilty for fancying the hot barista in the coffee shop, for allowing my eyes to linger on the charming stranger that left me a tip when I was working at the bar, or for swooning over Chris Pratt the first time I watched him ride a motorcycle through the jungle with a bunch of velociraptors in the Jurassic World reboot (don’t ask — just watch).

Why these wildly different examples? Because for me, they are as unlikely as one another. Sure, coming onto someone in a coffee shop is statistically far more likely than being swept off my feet and away from the jaws of the Indominus-Rex by one of Chris Pratt’s bulging biceps as he rides us off together into the sunset (swoon). For me, asking someone else out on a date is even more unrealistic. The beauty of monogamy is the sacrifices you make. While other opportunities may come and go, to unwaveringly stick with that one person is incredibly gratifying and rewarding.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that when you set out to write an article arguing that fancying other people is A Good Thing, you must be very careful first to spell out that you are Not A Cheater!

Good. Now that’s done, assuming that you are all convinced that I am a good person, I’ll get to the heart of the matter.

“Being in love is fantastic, but after a while you start to miss the feeling of having a crush”

Being in love is fantastic, but after a while you start to miss the feeling of having a crush: the ‘newness’, the mystery, the fact that you don’t know if they like you back. I know my boyfriend likes me back, otherwise why would he have remained faithfully shackled to me through the years? With him, I know where I stand. But with a stranger, you have none of this. With a stranger you can construct a beautiful intricate fantasy. The less you know, the better, and the more infinite possibilities and scenarios can fill your mind.

The key thing, I think, is to not let your relationship get stale. If you are in a monogamous relationship and ban yourself from even thinking about anyone else in a romantic or sexual way you run the risk of getting bored, and then you get resentful. You also stop feeling sexy yourself. Essentially, you can get stuck in a rut. For example, even if you loved ham sandwiches, you wouldn’t eat one religiously every lunchtime for the rest of your life without even thinking about the other options from time to time, would you? The fun of life lies in variety. Ham sandwiches are still, after all, my favourite, but indulging the idea of a BLT every once in a while never hurt anyone.

It’s important to keep that spark alive, the flirty energy, and a sense of healthy competition. I don’t want to be taken for granted, and I don’t want to take my partner for granted either. I don’t want my boyfriend to think that either of us have ‘settled’; that we’re stuck together because there are no other options, or worse because we can’t be bothered to look for someone else. I want to know, or at least to imagine, that other opportunities are there for both of us. That other people fancy us separately. That for some stranger in a bar, on a train, or in a coffee shop, we are their fleeting crush.

It’s fun to flirt and fantasise. Work and study can be so mundane. Why deny ourselves a meaningless crush from time to time? It doesn’t mean I love my boyfriend any less. At the end of the day, I know that when I’ve exhausted my imagination, and Chris Pratt on his motorcycle has ridden off into the back of my mind, taking my entertaining daydream away with him, the person I really love will be there for me. That the reality is as good — better — than my daydream. And to know too, that we continue to choose each other, that out of the crowd of crushes I keep picking him, and he — despite the fact that I’m a huge pain in the arse — keeps picking me.