Sometimes Mike and I seem to be speaking two very different languages, but I don’t think it’s because he uses blue type and I use pink. I think it’s just that we’re two very different people with very different ideas about things. Today, I encountered one of those differences that proves that differing views don’t break cleanly along gender lines. After all, it’s supposedly the woman who is always thinking relationship/love/marriage/future after just a few dates, and the guy who supposedly holds back, right? So I was doubly dumbfounded when Mike suggested in his last post that a “relationship” could occur in a month.
That was good information to have, in a missing link kind of way, because we’ve been talking about this break between relationships thing for a long time in different contexts, from different angles, with regard to different dates and relationships and possibilities and I’m thinking now that a big part of the reason we’ve been talking at cross-purposes is that I was talking about RELATIONSHIPS when I said “relationships” and Mike was talking about fleeting encounters.
I definitely wouldn’t suggest that if you dated someone for a month or two, you needed an 8-month break to clear the slate and get your head reoriented before you started dating again. Not unless, of course, you’d plunged into that brief dating relationship prematurely and ended up all messed up over it and in the same psychological state you might have been if you’d just ended an actual long-term relationship. No, when I suggested that taking some time to be on your own and get to know yourself was a months-long process and not a weeks-long one, I was talking about people who had come out of marriages, years-long relationships, serious commitments.
The real point is that all too often when a relationship ends, the knee-jerk reaction is to start trying to fill that void as quickly as possible. And often that means skipping over the opportunity to learn something valuable about yourself. It often means skipping over the opportunity to get comfortable with yourself and seek out a new partner from a position of health and strength rather than out of need. And it often means that need drives one to abandon all rational judgment in the selection of that substitute mate (which, of course, perpetuates the cycle when it goes badly).
Worse, you’re trying to fill a vacancy created by the departure of someone who was WRONG FOR YOU. When that happens, the empty spot you’re trying to fill is shaped a lot like the wrong person.
In Mike’s analysis, a “relationship” is born at about a month, but then it takes another few months before you can hope to start seeing a person’s true colors. Call me crazy, but I don’t think you can begin to decide whether or not you’re interested in pursuing a relationship until you know who you’re dealing with–so if we don’t see a person’s true self for three of four months, then three or four months is the point at which it may be possible for a relationship to BEGIN to develop. The development of the relationship itself will take additional months. Mike talks about taking some downtime after a relationship ends like it’s the equivalent of being forced to sit in the penalty box, but that seems short-sighted to me. What’s the point of racing back out on the ice if your skate is broken and you’re only going to fall flat on your face? How is that going to advance your overall cause?
It seems to me that taking the time necessary to move back into the dating world with a healthy heart and a clear head is time well spent, and maybe that length of time does vary from one person to another, from one relationship to another. That’s why my next post will list the top ten circumstances under which you have no business dating–regardless of how long it’s been.
Interesting views, but I’m more about living in the moment and try not to analyze to much. Met my dh in June of ‘93, moved in together that month, he proposed August 3rd and we married 2+ months later on October 23, same year. Been 17 years so guess this moment living time worked out okay. Maybe since it was my 3rd marriage and umpteenth relationship, I decided WTF, why not?
Lisa, it probably worked out for you because you didn’t apply “rules” like waiting three months before you decided whether you even wanted to date this man. Which probably would have lead to a “you snooze, you lose” scenario.
One of my high school teachers used to say that rules were for people who didn’t know how to act without them. Perhaps the same concept applies here. For those who have sense enough not to jump into a new relationship while still staying up late into the night obsessing over the ex or to use a new “relationship” as a bandaid insted of cleaning the wound, it makes perfect sense not to think in terms of average time it takes to get your head straight and such. For those who keep making one bad decision after another without pausing for breath in between, it might be wise to think in terms of “rules” instead of applying non-existent “judgment” to a situation and creating yet another disaster.
[...] was with a man I was ever in what I’d designate a “relationship” with (though Mike’s view might differ). I don’t think that’s because the kisses weren’t as memorable so much as because [...]