Contributed by: Jet on Tuesday, September 24 2013 @ 07:07 am
Last modified on
If you ever want to get a heated argument going, or a million responses with absolutely no consensus, just ask one question: What is the appropriate length of time before a relationship becomes “serious”? So serious that you’re talking a long-term commitment like marriage?
Chances are, you’ll hear everything under the sun. You’ll hear oddly specific but arbitrary amounts of time, like “five months” or “a year and a half.” You’ll hear touching sentiments, like “As soon as you know you can’t live without the other person.” You might hear vaguely gloomy pronouncements like “You can never know, and the odds are stacked against you, so whenever you feel up to making that gamble, I guess.”
Most of all, though, you’ll hear anecdotes. You’ll hear about the couple who got engaged after five weeks and ultimately divorced, and the couple who got married after two weeks and stayed together the rest of their lives. You’ll hear about “love at first sight” and celebrity marriages that crumbled after days. If the person you’re talking to is or was ever in a relationship, you’ll hear the details on that and how that’s shaped their perception of what a lasting relationship requires.
You’ll hear a bunch of noise, but chances are, it won’t be very helpful. Simply put, every person is different, with different strengths and different blind spots. They’re in a relationship with another unique person, who brings their own set of factors. You could even factor in the current circumstances (the reason you hear things like, “The right people, the wrong time”). Thus, every relationship is slightly different from the next.
So, what is the appropriate length of time before you get serious? Perhaps the real answer is a mishmash of everything you’ve heard. There’s certainly no hard-and-fast rule. Maybe you’ll “know when you know,” or maybe you’re the kind of person who just has to make that “gamble.” The one thing you do know is yourself; you know if you’re the kind of person who tends to make impetuous decisions. You know if you’re the sort of person who never feels one hundred percent about a decision until it’s made. You know if this is something typical for you, or wholly different.
And, of course, you know how you feel about your partner, and hopefully you’re communicating with them about this as well. You can’t go by a pre-ordained length of time to know if the two of you are ready for the next step, but you can know if you’re ready to take that “gamble” together. You can survey hundreds of people and just get more noise; ultimately you and your partner are the only two opinions that matter.