From the ages of 14 to 19, I had 10 boyfriends, and that is nothing to brag about.

I know a ton of people, of all genders and sexual orientations, who have done the same — part of a group of millennials known as “serial daters.”

There’s nothing wrong with casually going on a lot of dates. With dating apps like Tinder, it’s very easy to meet someone, have a casual dinner or coffee date and keep it at that. The problem is jumping between actual relationships, ones that require significant time, energy and emotional investment. When you’re constantly jumping from relationship to relationship, you’re not giving yourself ample time to come down from the adrenaline-flooded, butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling of a new relationship. We need to come down from this.

If you’re a serial dater, you probably like this feeling. If you didn’t like it, you wouldn’t constantly be putting yourself into situations that generate it. When you always get this adrenaline through relationships, however, you stop challenging yourself to fulfill it in other ways. What is different about relationship adrenaline is that there is someone else inexorably linked to you who is sharing it. No other experience that provides this feeling is wholly rooted in another person. There is an inherent security in this that keeps you from leaving your comfort zone.

When you get your adrenaline rush from, for example, trying a new activity or traveling to a new place, there is not that person so close to fall back on. It is you driving the experience, and that teaches you to think independently, determine what you want and become more self-assured. In a relationship, you are always deferring back to someone else; there’s always a joint decision or a compromise. I get that you love the feeling of butterflies in your stomach. I do too. But you can get that feeling in so many other ways.

Serial dating is also inherently habitual. It’s just human nature that if you do something enough, you start to keep doing it the same way. Maybe it’s the way you meet people, maybe it’s how you behave in the first month of dating someone. Regardless, some level of routine carries over from one relationship to another for a serial dater.

While knowing what works for you is good, the problem with applying these habits to so many people is that it becomes more difficult to appreciate them as individuals. In an article in Psychology Today, Shahram Heshmat, Ph.D., who studies addiction, wrote that when we form habits, we begin to take for granted what we are doing. The bigger problem is that we don’t realize we’re taking things for granted. This isn’t fair to you and this isn’t fair to the people you’re dating.

When someone gives a part of himself or herself to you, that is valuable. No one should have the power to diminish that value into one item on a laundry list of past flings.

So, on the heels of my 20th birthday and the end of my first year of not being a serial dater, I think I owe an apology to my past 10 boyfriends. You’re all amazing people, and you all deserve to be treated that way. The only serial anything you should devote your time to should be the NPR podcast.

Julia Cohen is a SESP sophomore. She can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].