Colorado, from a New Yorker's point of view

One of the harder parts of dating is figuring out when you are exclusive.  I think back to years ago when you would ask a girl out it was kind of assumed that you were exclusive, at least once you started fooling around.  Now, especially with the proliferation of on-line dating, it is very difficult to figure when it becomes inappropriate to keep dating other women.

Relationship experts would advise that you need to have an open discussion with your partner.  I would tend to agree, unless you are fearful of the answer, in which case I think it is better to fly blind and avoid the topic.

You have ventured in the land of exclusivity when as the weekend rolls around you assume you are spending the weekend with the other person.  If you consult each other before making plans, you’re a couple.  But what about when you are both still doing your own thing for at least part of the weekend?

How many days or nights out of the week do you have to hang out before you are exclusive?  Does sex play a role in determining exclusivity?  How about un-protect sex?  Does that change anything?  For some people just having sex means you are in a committed relationship.

A few months ago I started dating (or were we hanging out?  I don’t know what word to use) this person.  At the same time I was doing on-line dating, which meant I was going out with a small group of women.  None of them made it past date two, but technically I was dating.  You could never tell your wife, “I met a woman on-line, we had coffee but it’s no big deal because we only hung out twice.”  However, this was early enough in the relationship that it was no big deal.  I even expected that she was dating a bunch of people.

But what happens after you’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks?  Throughout the initial courtship she always wore a claddagh ring (quick side note: I wasn’t sure how to spell it so I googled “stupid Irish ring” and it came right up.) She worn the ring facing out, indicating that she was single.    Then after a few weeks of hanging out the ring was turned the other way, indicating we were an item.  We probably should have had “the discussion” that weekend, but having a date or two lined up the following week I to wanted to avoid the subject.  I might have avoided the subject too long because after about two weeks the ring was turned around once again.  Which I gladly interpreted as a permission slip to do whatever I wanted to when I was home for Xmas.  For all the forecasters out there the change in direction also makes a great leading indicator that the relationship is over.

I have another friend facing a similar situation, except she had “the discussion” and yet she is still not sure if she is in an exclusive relationship with her boyfriend.  They’ve been seeing each other for a little over two months.  Her boyfriend said he wants to be exclusive, yet he only wants to see her about twice a week.  That’s not really fair for her.  She has a very part-time boyfriend and she’s expected not to date and meet other guys.  Any thoughts?

There are also bad times to have the conversation.   One time I was leaving a party and going back to a friend’s house with the assumption that we were going to hook-up.  The party we were at was pretty loud.  Later on the way to her place, I couldn’t hear her when she asked about our relationship.  She either said she wanted a relationship or she didn’t.  I knew it was one or the other, I just wasn’t sure which one.

At that point in the evening it is very easy to get pre-occupied with thoughts of what’s to come.  You don’t really want to say anything to jeopardize where the night is heading.  In those situations the words “that’s just what I was thinking” seem to work well.  For the record, I wouldn’t suggest misleading anyone, but at that moment relationship or not I didn’t really care.