I once spoke with an absolutely vile person who explained why he exclusively hit on married/taken women He'd made a pass at me, I said I was taken, he said he knew, and I called him out and said "If you knew, why would you do that?" "If I hit on single women, my competition is every guy in the world. If I hit on taken ones it's one guy." Although this is one of the most toxic things I've ever heard, I do think it's worth internalizing, because you can make your partner compete against the entire world even if no one ever hits on you That's what you're doing if you're constantly comparing them in your head to others, that's what porn does, that's what getting deep in the weeds with romance books does, and it's what the Call Her Daddy-style "You can do better" mindset teaches And you know what? Maybe you actually CAN do better. Maybe both of you could! You could both spend your entire lives treating people like baseball cards, trading them in over and over to optimize for some superior stat But if you've committed to someone, specifically if you've vowed to "forsake all others," they are not your monkey branch to use to upgrade