Question for the crowds:
When you start dating someone, when do you consider a relationship exclusive? First kiss? First sex? When you've seen them more than twice a week? Do you outright say it's exclusive or just let the feeling be enough?
When is a relationship exclusive?
Question for the crowds:
When you start dating someone, when do you consider a relationship exclusive? First kiss? First sex? When you've seen them more than twice a week? Do you outright say it's exclusive or just let the feeling be enough?
When one of you would be upset if the other person did any of the things you've mentioned with another person. Or more to the point if you find that you'd be upset if the other person you were dating kissed someone or had sex with someone else then its time to start talking about it. Going by some formal rulebook, tradition, or whatever have you is pretty dumb when the whole question relates to how you and they feel about it.Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
. . .
It is not exclusive until both parties agree that it is. Feeling it is exclusive is not enough. Discuss it.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
I feel that any relationship is entered into with the assumption that it is exclusive. Don't get me wrong - I know plenty of people who do serial first dates in a weekend, or who are 'casually' seeing multiple people in parallel, but I'm not a fan of such behavior. Bottom line, dating is intended as a 'feeler' to try out a potential long-term (and presumably exclusive) mate. Unless a relationship is very explicitly characterized by both parties as being non-exclusive, I think the default assumption should be with exclusivity.
Obviously, such cut-and-dried rules get complicated in reality. What if you just 'hang out' with someone a lot? What if you randomly made out with them at a bar and aren't sure it's going anywhere real? I think that as soon as a relationship is defined as a 'relationship' by either party, though, it is by default exclusive. Certainly if there is a formal date with an expectation of more, I'd say it falls in that category.
*shrugs* I know a lot of people disagree with my take on relationships, though, so do what seems right in the given situation. I'd err on the side of exclusivity, though.
I do find one item interesting; in recent decades, the concept of 'relationship' has gotten awfully muddled. I mean, I wasn't officially in a 'relationship' with my (future at the time) wife until we'd spent a *lot* of time together for three or four months. Plenty of people will hook up with someone before they really know them, but don't necessarily attach any significant or longer term relationship to the act. This definitely results in odd social dynamics that don't fit under the classical rubric of 'relationships'.
I don't think so. If the usual behaviour is that relationships are exclusive (it is where I live) than it is more like an implicit contract. As an open relationship is the exception, it's this kind of relationship that both should agree on.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
What relationship?
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
When the people engaged in the relationship say it is exclusive, out loud and to each otherWTF America
I take it you haven't met many polyamorous people
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Dread is not America.When the people engaged in the relationship say it is exclusive, out loud and to each other
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
What are you, some kind of Communist?
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Well, I've met them, Nessie, but they're still not a societal norm. I think the working assumption (at least in the US) is that a relationship is exclusive unless explicitly declared otherwise. Some people are open to more... relaxed... arrangements, but those must be agreed upon mutually rather than assumed.
The only real grey area here IMO is when you actually enter a relationship, not whether an existing romantic relationship is exclusive. Obviously there are communities in which this assumption is not in fact the case.
How do you define communist?What are you, some kind of Communist?
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
You aren't addressing the actual question.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
I think that the assumption should be for non-exclusivity, with discussions of exclusive happening once the relationship moves past "oh god, this was the best sex ever."
We're stuck in a bloody snowglobe.
Uhm, yes I am. I specifically said that a formal date, for me, constitutes a 'relationship', and as such would have an a priori assumption of exclusivity.
I'm mostly with Wiggin, but I'm a cautious sort. If I'm seeing someone and we haven't clearly spoken about and defined the relationship, I MIGHT run into trouble assuming things are open and going on to date or sleep with someone else, while I am unlikely to find trouble by not dating or sleeping with someone else.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
That's just bizarre. Because someone says yes to a date you lock them into a relationship without even asking them how they feel about it?
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
I don't get it. Could you make a whole sentence and then I might answer.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Uh, no. There's no 'lock in'. You have three options: (a) continue dating, in which case the relationship is default exclusive, (b) stop dating, in which case you're a free agent, or (c) have a explicit conversation about the parameters of the relationship as it stands, to allow for dating in a casual but not exclusive manner. That way, no one gets hurt, yes?
Someone always gets hurt!
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
I just meant that no relationship is established when you start dating. Dating may or may not lead to a relationship.
(a) Just because the person continues to date you is no reason to believe that they consider it a relationship let alone an exclusive relationship.
(b) There never was a relationship but the person might like to still go out with you because they enjoy it more than going out by themself.
(c) That is backward. The coversation would be about establishing exclusivity. I can't imagine you going on a date and explaining to the lady that you want to poke her once in a while but that you are also going to continue poking other ladies as well.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
Do we speak about having a dinner together and going to the cinemas or about French kissing and sex? I think we need to clarify the term "date" here.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
All of the above. Just because you stick your tounge in her nether regions is no reason to believe you have established a relationship...she might be married with kids for all you know. Or worse, you don't like the taste.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
Of course you have, and an affair is also a relationship. I think you have the strange assumption, that a relationship is a one way path. But actually you can brake up at any time.
Do you really do that when you start a relationship (asking for exclusiveness) or are you just playing devils advocate here. Because if I imagined the situation, I would feel a little awkward.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
That's the point. If the other party would not be comfortable with a 'let's keep this relationship open for now' speech, don't you think the default should be to err on the side of caution, and assume he/she feels there is a sense of exclusivity in the relationship?(c) That is backward. The coversation would be about establishing exclusivity. I can't imagine you going on a date and explaining to the lady that you want to poke her once in a while but that you are also going to continue poking other ladies as well.
It absolutely boggles my mind that exclusivity to many here is only established upon mutual declaration. I could see arguments for it not applying until X stage of a relationship, but one has free license to fuck/date whoever one wants until your SO specifically *tells* you it's not okay? Please.
In the context of the question, you are using too broad a definition of relationship.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
If you start seeing someone, it's exclusive.
But I am a fairly old-fashioned sort.
How does one become a significant other without discussing exclusivity?
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
Easily.
I have never discussed exclusivity in the five or so long-term relationships I have had.
The assumption is there.
That assumption has bitten me once, so I ended that relationship before it became long-term - I could see myself getting hurt.
Faith is a weakness easily exploited. Better to talk and get it out in the open.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
I'd like to think the kind of girl I go for isn't the type to 'exploit weakness'.
If one has any doubts then discuss it, sure, but I'm very much a one guy one girl person, and I tend to attract/be attracted to girls of the same attitude, so the notion of exclusivity simply doesn't arise.
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