How Many Dates Before Relationship? (5 Key Milestones)

Are you in a casual relationship with a great guy?

Are you thinking of taking it to the next level?

Perhaps you’re hesitating because you’re not sure whether it’s the right time.

If so, this post is for you. 

Here, we’ll explore some ideas surrounding the right time to make a relationship official. 

However, before we do that, it’s important that you read the next few sentences carefully. 

You won’t be able to get into an ‘official’ relationship unless this guy also wants to. 

And he won’t want to unless he feels a certain way about you. 

In my teenage years and early twenties, I was always the woman who could date great guys, but never keep them. 

But I had no idea why!

It felt like my dreams of a loving long-term relationship would never come to fruition. 

Then, I had a dramatic turnaround. And it all started after learning about an almost unknown aspect of male psychology. 

It’s called ‘The Hero’s Instinct’ – and it surrounds the way men react to certain female behaviors. 

It turns out there’s a consistent method of triggering certain feelings in a man. Emotions that will make him putty in your hands. 

Instead of seeing you as just a sexual plaything, he’ll view you as a potential life partner. 

I know because I tried it out! You can read about my personal experience using ‘The Hero’s Instinct’ in this blog post. 

If you want to be in a happy loving relationship, it’s important that you understand how to make a man feel this way. 

Without this knowledge, you’ll always be stuck selling a relationship to men who don’t want you.

Now, with that said, let’s dive deeper into how to discover whether you’re ready for an official relationship.

How Many Dates Should You Go Through To Become Official?

There are two schools of thought when it comes to answering how many dates you should go on before you become official with a person. Some will say that the amount of dates you go on is totally dependent on the person you are seeing and how quickly you fall for that individual. While some will say that the dating rule of five will prevent you from getting hurt and falling for a person who does not reciprocate your feelings. This dating rule will also prevent you from sleeping with a person too soon or even just kissing a person before you are both ready.

With respect to the school of thought that it is impossible to have a set amount of dates with a before you make your relationship official, the reasoning here is that a number of dates with one person may not be enough to get to know them. In comparison, however, a certain number of dates with someone else may be more than enough to know that you want to take things further with one another. 

However, there is a good basis on how many dates before a relationship with someone becomes official. As previously alluded to, it can prevent you from getting hurt and falling too deeply. The reason for this is that in the initial throes of a relationship, especially when you really like someone, you can so easily get carried away. The danger here is that because of that passion, you have not really got to know one another deeply enough to really know each other well enough as to whether you would be a good fit.

Additionally, by having a set amount of dates and a set timeframe to do things in – like only kissing on the third date, or only having sex with someone on a certain date number – you can also help yourself not be used by someone who is only out for one thing. The reasoning here is that if people are only dating to have meaningless sex then they won’t stick around until date four or five for that to happen. They, instead, will want to have sex on one of the earlier dates. 

Making a relationship official is a difficult thing to bring up with one another too. Therefore if you are having a good time with someone you are seeing, having these types of rules can further help you in another two ways. Firstly, it can keep you both on the same page – if they adhere to the same set of rules or dating figures. Secondly, it can simply give you the confidence that it is going well with the person you are dating and seem to like a lot. 

What Things Do You Have To Consider When Dating Before You Become Official? 

In addition, to having a certain amount of dates to go on before making a relationship official, some people try to consider a number of things before becoming an official item with someone. In fact, some people only use these considerations instead of a set number of dates before establishing a committed relationship. 

The reason being is that they can still protect you from getting hurt, but they are not quite such an arbitrary way of delineating when casual dating should become a serious relationship. Here we ask five questions that can act as landmarks for when you can start a relationship with someone you have only been seeing casually until recently. 

1. Do You Want To See Other People?

Ask yourself whether you want to continue seeing other people. If the answer is no, then that is a key landmark to meet in terms of how ready you are for a relationship. If you like him or her and don’t want to say yes to a date with someone else, then this is a sign that you like them very much and things could stand the test of time with them. 

The same needs to be said for the other individual for your relationship to start being a monogamous one. It could be that they still want to see other people and are not ready to settle down yet. This may change in time, but you both need to be in a place where you both want to be committed to one another.

2. Are You Happy? 

It can be very easy to forget that a relationship should be fun and loving things that bring you joy. A lot of the time, we start seeing people we think we should be seeing because they meet so many of our superficial wants and needs. However, if you do not have that spark with an individual, they will most likely not make you happy – either now or in the long term. 

So ask yourself, are you happy with the individual that you have been seeing for a while now? If the answer is no, then it may not be the best time or they may not be the best person to start a relationship with. 

If you are still not ready to give up on them even though you are not truly happy, ask yourself what you can do – both individually and together – to make each other happy and content. From there, you could have the basis for a solid relationship.

However, if you do answer that, yes, you are very happy with a person, then this is a great reason to cement things between the two of you and commit to a relationship with each other.

3. Do You Trust Each Other?

Trust should be the backbone of every relationship. Without it, it is hard to feel confident about many aspects of your relationship, and where the future with each other will take you. So ask yourself whether the individual that you have been seeing is trustworthy in your eyes. And do you think they trust you? If you both trust each other implicitly, and you both make each other happy and neither of you wants to see anyone else, then it could be time for you to establish your relationship as official. 

4. Can You See A Future Together?

At the crux of every relationship is whether the two people within it can see themselves together in the future. If you can’t, then it may not be a good idea to commit yourselves to this one relationship with each other at that moment. This idea of a future together may come at some point, but if you don’t see yourselves together in the future at all then you need to question why and whether it is right for you both to be with each other in a committed relationship in the short term. 

5. Have You Been Dating For A Long Time?

While for some, having a certain amount of dates to hit before making a relationship official may sound too regimented when it comes to love, it can be helpful in stopping you from casually seeing someone with which you neither love or want a future with. However, if you don’t want to be a person with particular dating rules and targets, then what can stop you from coasting along with an individual is simply to ask yourself whether you have been seeing someone for a long time. 

If the answer is yes, then ensure that you ask yourself the above questions. They will stop you from continuing with an individual with whom you have very lukewarm feelings for. It can highlight when you simply like a person and force you to realize that you will never fall in love with them and so, therefore, starting a committed relationship with them is not worthwhile. 

FAQs

The Bottom Line

Some people find having a set number of dates to go on before making a relationship official a really helpful quota to have in place. It is particularly effective at protecting people from getting too carried away with their feelings and therefore running the risk of falling too hard only to get hurt quickly. 

While this is obviously a good idea, in theory, it won’t work for everyone. Some people will want to have those initial feelings of love and lust that are so intoxicating at the beginning of a relationship or on the first few dates with a person. To a certain extent, while a set number of dates to tick off your list, has a good intention behind it, it will stop people from properly feeling some of the excitement that first meeting a special someone can bring about. 

All Things Considered…

Only you can answer which action will work best for you. If you are someone that falls easily in love with others, but can also find themselves so easily hurt, perhaps having some dating rules may be a good idea before you start a relationship. However, if you are usually someone who is very cautious with their feelings, then maybe there is no need to have a set number of dates to go on before you establish a relationship official with someone you are seeing.

Fundamentally, being in a relationship is a serious decision. If you like an individual and want to take your relationship with them further, then you need to do so in a way that makes you feel comfortable.