In a previous article “Is this serious? Acknowledging your relationship beyond dating,” we spoke about simplifying your feelings towards your partner, and if you’re ready to take it to a more committed stage in your relationship. If you find yourself not convinced, here are two factors to check off in your mind to help get you to your answer:
How long have you been seeing each other? A study from “Time Off” of over 11,000 participants state that most couples start to engage in a more serious step in their relationship around six to eight weeks from the initial conception of them dating. Considering your individual responsibilities such as work, time alone for yourself, gym or other hobbies, hanging with your friends and any other events. a safe conservative amount is 7 to 10 dates within 2 months.
Do you talk to each other regularly? This should come as no surprise that communication is key to knowing if you’re ready to get serious. Most new relationships typically start with talking to each other once or twice a day, and minimum of 2 to 3 times a week depending on how busy your both are. Acknowledging each other’s time is a great way to show respect and appreciation for you and your partner’s lifestyle. For example, you work a 9 to 5 schedule, and you make the effort to call or text in the morning, break time and at the end of the day. If you’re the type who loves to talk about anything and everything all the time, communicating 2-3 times a day may seem pretty normal. However, let’s say you both have a strenuous schedule. Maybe you’re both doing something that takes up a lot of your time, and you don’t the luxury of talking more than once a day. How about if you’re both living on opposite sides of the planet or on different time zones. It’s ideal for couples would work out a schedule that best fits their unique circumstances. Our recommendation is once a day.
Being honest about your individual needs on these topics will save both of you the headaches and heartaches in the future when thinking about growing as an exclusive couple.
My wife is a big fan of romantic comedy series, and I’m a big on anime. We both tend to binge watch our favorite shows. One thing I’ve always found fascinating when engaging ourselves into these episodes, is our desire to want to know everything, to help make sense of it all. If you’re like us, you watch a great episode, and suddenly you’re hooked and want to learn more. So what else do you do? you watch episode after episode (sometimes skipping to the middle or end of that series) and as you learn about it, you develop an opinion about the characters and subconsciously a relationship towards them as well. At some point you get your hopes up, sometimes anxiety takes over depending on what happening during show. And as much as we hate to think about it, you get disappointed too. I think it’s the hopeless romantic in all of us that sets that tone. So even watching a series on Netflix or Hulu can create different stages of happiness, tension or any other emotional attachment depending on how engaged we allow ourselves to be. Relationships should be no different. There’s nothing wrong with skipping ahead to see if the two of you are meant to be, part of the adventure is learning about the characters involved in your own relationship series and all the good, the bad and unknown that comes along with it. So, don’t over think it. Trust your gut, and practical logic to move forward to the next episode.
