I was very lucky in that even though I fucked up some (most) of my monogamous relationships by cheating, most of my girlfriends had fantastic "emotional intelligence" and demonstrated a lot of very useful behaviours.

So much about normal relationships seems to be about taking your partners for granted, one way or another, and I've been lucky enough not to have been exposed much to that kind of paradigm. I have nearly always been with people who demanded respect (as do I). I think if you get the respect thing sorted, it gives you that essential base to work from, no matter what your actual relationship setup ends up being.