I can’t get a relationship to last longer than it takes to make copies of their tapes.

The line is a wry, self-deprecating joke that measures romantic longevity against a mundane, time-bound task: duplicating someone’s tapes. It implies a pattern of brief, transactional relationships—partners are present just long enough to leave behind something reproducible (music, recordings, evidence of a subculture), then disappear. The specificity of “tapes” evokes an analog era of mixtapes and cassette copying, suggesting intimacy mediated by shared media and the casual borrowing that happens in short-lived connections. The humor masks a sharper loneliness: the speaker’s emotional bonds are so fleeting that the most durable residue is a copied artifact rather than a sustained relationship.