Alt. title: what are you supposed to do with a boyfriend?
I have been in a complicated situationship for years and I think I’ve lost sight of what a functional relationship would even be like. I’m most curious about established, monogamous relationships where you’re not living together (yet).
How often do you see each other? How often do you text/call? What is your relationship with each other’s family and friends like? What kinds of things do you do together? How do you navigate disagreements? Please help me gain some perspective!
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9 months together. Aim for one date + one overnight. Text all day, calls are rare. Doing family intros next month. We: explore, hike, fossil hunt, walk my dogs, go to the movies, fish, excursions, vacation, try new restaurants, take turns cooking, off the top of my head.
All of the questions you have asked are great and very important – and will be totally unique to every relationship.
That means that while you’ll (Hopefully!) get good insight back from other couples in this post, ultimately you’ll want to ask YOURSELF these questions. Like you said, it does seem like you’ve lose sight of what you yourself want.
Make it fun! Sit down with a drink and a cute journal, and write down what you want in a romantic partnership. Likes, dislikes, wants, needs, boundaries, you name it. Have at it!
You got this!
We get together once a week. We text every day, even if it’s just to share a video we like. His mom lives with him, so I see her regularly. She’s a bit bipolar so she drives him nuts, but he’s also very sweet with her. I come hang out, we drink tequila, we fuck, we watch movies. We go out to dinner. Fuck some more. Travel together when we can. It’s a very happy relationship.
Edit: I should add that we are starting a business together.And that is something i’ve always wanted. I don’t want children and i’ve always wanted to have that with someone that we can talk about our business. It’s really awesome.
How do we navigate disagreements? We don’t have any these days but when we have had disagreements in the past, I take screenshots of the conversation and run it through GPT and ask it to analyze the conversation and summarize what each of us are trying to tell each other. I ask it what we can do to better support each other and be better communicators. Having it in black and white and from a purely objective standpoint has really helped us move forward and be better to each other.
3.5 years, not living together due to circumstances (ie: my kids aren’t ready for that lol).
From the start, we talked daily with rare exceptions. I found out only recently that he’d set an alarm on his phone for our usual talk time so he’d never miss it. Due to distance, it was hard to have in person dates but we did every two weeks and then every week because we just couldn’t stand waiting two weeks. It was a sacrifice on both our parts to make it happen but we just couldn’t get enough of each other. I think around 9 months in he bought a house about 20 minutes away and we ramped things up a whole lot. I started to go to his place twice a week in the evenings so we could see each other without my bunch of adolescent offspring and my judgemental dogs hanging around. In between those dates, we talked every evening, as we had been.
At this point I go to his once a week and he stays at mine Friday-Sunday and basically every holiday. We check in morning and lunch time briefly if we’re not together and have an hour to chat on the evenings we’re not together. This sounds like a lot, but it’s in lieu of living together, and we miss each other.
What we do together: We are boring people. We watch TV, we do our different hobbies parallel (in the same place, but doing different things), we explore state parks, we cook together, we hang out with family. Sometimes we just go for a drive in the country and eat gas station food or ice cream. When we can actually afford it, we’ll go to a restaurant or a concert.
Disagreements: I am incredibly lucky to have met someone who suits me so well that we rarely have to have any serious arguments and none of those arguments have ever turned into an actual fight. I think the key to that is that we’ve both done a LOT of self work and came into the relationship ready to be brave and honest and safe for each other. No hiding, no beating around the bush, no avoidance, no people pleasing. Even when we have the urge to do those things, instead of doing them we just admit that we’re tempted, encourage and reassure, and then deal with the issue at hand. I could NOT do this if I wasn’t 100% sure of the safety he offers. There are still times when I have to really fight hard to express myself in a direct manner and doing so leaves me exhausted and in tears because my anxious attachment/codependent self finds it absolutely terrifying to say anything that might inspire an unhappy feeling in someone else.
We’ve had our hardest discussions lying in each other’s arms, crying together, and taking breaks to remind each other of our love. It’s amazing and I wouldn’t believe people can actually do that except that I experience it myself.
Had to edit to add a bunch because I can’t pull quotes from OP for some reason.
Before my husband and I moved in together, we spent weekends together. Went out to eat, watched shows, ate shrooms, went to movies, drank, sex, estate sales, antique stores, an occasional weekend trip, eventually we did stuff with his kids
We see each other and stay at each other’s places almost every night (it didn’t start this way as we’re both pretty independent and I’m used to living alone, but has become that over the past year). We text to check in through each other’s work day. If we’re not together we always say good morning, check in through the day if we can and message each other goodnight. Or if one of us is away for a few days then we’ll call on the phone before bed. We’ve combined our friend groups and hang out with each other’s friend groups. Our families have met and we’re both in touch with them often. We actually all spent last Christmas together. Our parents always ask how the other is doing. We love to travel together, laugh and be goofy together, go out to eat, go to shows and gigs together, get groceries, explore new places, go shopping, go to the beach, go camping, cook together, eat together, work along side each other, meet each other for lunch, make each other work lunches and have A LOT of sex. We always snuggle at bedtime and talk and the same for when we wake up. For the very few disagreements and miscommunications we have we talk through them calmly with love and respect and do our best to support and understand each other. I genuinely love the way we work through difficult things together and we always come out better for it having learned something new about ourselves or each other!
We’ve been together a little over a year and are planning to move in together in the coming months.
We moved in like 2 months after making it official. He’s proposing soon!!
We are like the same person, twin flame. We spend all the time outside of work. Can’t get enough of him, even when he’s manic lol we are working through that with meds balance those chemicals out. Yes, I have been on them, too, for a few years. We are the same and our better selves out of our lifetime. He’s 43, I’m 34.
We make music, go out, artistic, outgoing, fun and chill. No human kids, but 3 cat kiddos. Our rental came painted blue throughout, a lá Chefchaouen, the blue city. We call it heaven, in the sky, above the clouds, an oasis that regularly gets fog from burning trees indoors.
2 years- we see each just us two twice a week usually. he is the primary parent to his son and mom is not super interested or involved. we go to restaurants, bars, shows, workout, hang out with friends and families, on walks, to the gym, on bike rides, events in our city, and to each other’s places. we love each other’s friends and families, although my mom was abusive and his parents live 1800 miles away, so we more are with each other’s families for holidays and weddings and events.
we constantly text and call often- definitely everyday multiple times a day, maybe not calling every single day though lol. we argue and usually he wants to take space and then resolve and so we usually separate and go to our own condos. we actually wish we could wait even longer to live together! lol. if i could afford it, i would wait a few more years before we got engaged and married and moved in to together!
We have been together for a year and half.
We go on dates 1-2 times per week (dinner, movie, ice cream shop, art gallery, symphony etc.), have a sleepover once a week and just do a regular cill hang out once a week too (errands, lazy day, walks, etc).
Talk all the time.
I am very, very happy with him.
Not in the new stage any more (together 14 years!) but one of the rules I lived by before we lived together was not to see each other more than 3 times a week. It was my closest friend who mentioned this “rule” to me and I’m so thankful to her. Admittedly I didn’t always adhere to this (ie would stay over on a Saturday evening into Sunday / spend Sunday day together which I guess could count as 2?!) but it was more the principle of not falling into seeing someone every day and being either desperate / clingy / needy / allowing us to miss each other etc and also have our own space. Prior relationships I’d fallen into that trap where almost immediately would stay over most nights and by switching that it helped heaps!
Arguments…. Still not sure I’ve worked that out but have had to learn he needs space to cool down (sometimes for DAYS) whereas I like to resolve quickly so this has been and still is a learning curve for me 😂
Another one I like which we follow now in our marriage but also did before
Date 2 x a month
Overnight / weekend break every 2 months
Activities I guess depends what you like to do! We do a lot of hikes together to new places! Took random day trips to the beach (we live nowhere near a beach and went in winter when it was rainy 😂)
We talk on the phone most days we don’t see each other. Text rarely(originally his preference. Now it’s mutual). Our families get along great and we take trips together. Mine for thanksgiving, his for Christmas. All immediate families together once every other year just because. Friends are incorporate. We do mundane stuff(grocery shop, chores, taxes, go to the hardware store) and more novelty stuff together(house parties, vacations, bdays).
We rarely disagree but neither of us is quick to get riled up. We try to talk through our perspectives. I’m usually more persuasive than he is lol.
When we were together but not living together (say 6 months to 1 year into our relationship) it looked like this:
How often did we see each other?
Probably 3-4 times a week, frequent sleepovers.
How often do you text/call?
Usually texted daily, rarely called except to figure out something like where we are meeting/something that needed to be sorted out quickly.
Relationship with each other’s family and friends?
I’d spent time with his family and friends (Christmas, etc). He has his daughter part time, and I saw her often. I live in a different country from my family and have a distant/challenged relationship with them, so he hadn’t even met my family. He would go on weekend trips with me and my friends and hang out with them, but not often -maybe 1x every few weeks or 2 weeks.
Things we would do together
Talk, make dinner together, occasional hiking or biking, hang out with each other’s friends, spend time with his daughter.
How did we navigate disagreements?
By talking and sometimes arguing, lol.
Text daily. Have sleepovers twice per week.
We saw each other every other day or once every 3 days. Sometimes I stayed at his house for the weekend.
Texting,everyday. Calling,once in a while cuz I didn’t like phone calls.
Pretty good both ways.
We went on restaurant dates,grocery shopping,walking,…
Communication and compromising.
P/s: we moved in together after 9 months into relationship.
We’re coming on a year officially together (we were friends first and kind of danced around the attraction). We’re long distance but visit each other every 6-8 weeks for a few weeks and plan to move in together this year.
When we visit, we live together and do all the mundane things together (cleaning, grocery shopping, etc.).
When we’re apart, we video chat practically every day in the evenings and hang out – chat about days, watch movies and shows together, do virtual games nights with friends.
Our relationship grew out of a platonic friendship and in many ways the romantic dynamic is just a deeper version of the friendship. So it’s very easy to just hang out even if we’re not doing much
LOL this is me…. been single six years and sometimes when I’m alone at my place I look around and think “what would a partner do if I had one? How would they be entertained while I did all my projects and activities? Would they judge me when they saw how long I spent on reddit?”
I’ll preface this by saying that my relationship moved faster than most. We knew from the first date that we met the one and would get married, as crazy as it sounds.
I’ve been married a while now but from the first date we would text and call every single day and see each other several times a week. If I didn’t have a child and take time to introduce him, we probably would have seen each other everyday otherwise. I met his family about a week into dating and they’re great, we saw them often. We didn’t really have disagreements and very rarely do. I’ve experienced an abusive relationship and don’t handle conflict well and I’m so thankful that he’s very understand and patient so we usually talk things out but always find a solution we’re both happy with. In our early relationship, we went on lots and lots of dates. Hiking all the time, day trips, museums, finding good food, movies at home. We still do all that but don’t have quite as much time. We have excellent communication and a really healthy relationship. The bottom line, you should feel comfortable with him. If you start to feel like you’re walking on eggshells or worried about his reaction or just feel uneasy, these are signs that it might be an ideal fit.
I’m (re)married now, but when dating my husband it was usually one weeknight date/sleepover, and then most weekends he would stay over from Friday after work to Sunday evening/Monday morning. We’d usually at least talk on the phone every evening, but a lot of times we’d play video games over Discord too. Texting was just good morning, good night, plan making stuff.
Most of my friends dating in their 30s have had a similar dynamic with people they end up in/are in relationships with – basically, a lot of time together as soon as it’s clear everyone is vibing.
Most meet friends and family early because if you can’t get along, what’s the point at this age?
As far as what people seem to do – whatever they would otherwise be doing, but together. Lots of sporting events, going out to eat, to bars, playing in rec sports leagues, taking hikes, playing video games, etc.