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PaperclipPerfector  11hr ago (text post)   282 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for May 20, 2026

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Context: still seeing my high scoring secretary, and thinking through some things.

Married/serious-relationship'd Mottizens: not how did you find them, but what was the process like once you did?

E.g.:

  1. how quickly did things get serious?
  2. how obvious was it to you that you wanted them to get serious?
  3. and how quickly?
  4. was there something that at first you thought was maybe unacceptable that you got over?
  5. oppositely, something great you didn't notice/fully appreciate?
  6. or, was your gut just correct quickly?

Met online (back when forums were all the rage) and chatted for a while, but it was pretty lightweight. Then we met in person and within a few weeks it became clear (at least for me) that it's going somewhere, and I want it to go somewhere. Moved together within about 2 months or so, and it has been more and more serious for the next 20 years :) I don't think there ever was anything unacceptable. I mean, there are a bunch of things that wouldn't be acceptable to me in a partner, but they usually surfaced pretty quickly and it didn't go anywhere. This time it did.

1.) From first meeting to exclusive relationship: about two months. Dated for seven months, then engaged; married seven months after that. So in total, married one year and four months after meeting.

2/3.) It only took a few weeks of dating, during which I was evaluating her various qualities, for me to realize that she was marriage material by my standards.

4.) She had spent several years in her 20s as a live-in caretaker for her grandmother with dementia; so for a long time her grandmother was basically the first priority in her life. This only ended up when the grandmother went into memory care, where she still is now. For a while, it wasn't clear to me if she was ready for marriage in the sense of being willing to put her marriage first, above all other family commitments. We had a conversation about it before I ever popped the question, and that conversation settled my doubts. It has never been a problem since.

An additional thing: she had a terrible diet and no history of exercise at all. She is slender, but almost purely by chance. I was concerned about the long-term sustainability of this. But while we were dating I got her into at least light exercise; and she has cleaned up her diet greatly since we've been living together. (Now - a recent visit of mine to the doctor indicated that I've gained weight in married life; so the tables have turned. We are supporting each other in this.)

5.) This was never really something I considered a priority, but living with her has greatly increased the livability of my environment. Just in that she cares about tidiness and the way things look, and takes steps to keep those things up. I take care of most of the dirt/grime chores, she takes care of the "things in their right places" chores, and between us we maintain a very nice home. In general we work together to accomplish things very effectively.

6.) None of this happened until my mid-30s. I trusted my gut before and it did not work out for me; but more than anything I think that's because I was seeking the wrong things, or indeed just didn't have a good idea of what a real, functional adult relationship would look like. Once I started looking for (what I think are) the right things, I recognized fairly quickly that my now-wife has those things.

  1. I asked her to be my girlfriend two and a half weeks after our first date. She said yes, but then a few days later said she thought we were moving too fast and requested we go back to just seeing each other (albeit exclusively). Exactly thirty days after our first date, we again decided to be in a relationship, and have been ever since.
  2. Quite obvious.
  3. After our second date (which was perhaps one week after our first), I stopped pursuing other women on the apps.
  4. During the period in which we were just dating but not in an explicit, exclusive relationship? Not that I recall.
  5. Again, not that I recall.
  6. I think so.

She said yes, but then a few days later said she thought we were moving too fast and requested we go back to just seeing each other (albeit exclusively).

Do Zoomers Really? What is the difference between seeing someone exclusively and a gf?

I'm a millennial and I do this. I'm also not a normie like the downstream poster suggested. They have different definitions and I think they come from the online dating app culture.

Exclusive: We are dating and agreeing not to see other people but we aren't official or investing heavily into each other.

Girlfriend/Boyfriend: We are dating exclusively, officially out to all our friends, and investing in each other and our relationship

Marriage: We are legally bound together and expect to stay together for the rest of our lives barring some unforeseen problem (and even then)

Basically a GF/BF represents a level of commitment higher than someone you are just exclusively dating. At least my expectation, is that hitting a rough patch with a GF/BF means you'll at least discuss it/try to work it out before someone decides to cut and run. If we are just exclusive then that sort of flighty/ghosty behavior is more in the realm of possibility.

Basically how public you make the commitment and how much of your social capital you attach to it. This is downstream of social media, I think - first Facebook's "relationship status" feature, now the concept of "soft launching" or "hard launching" a relationship on Instagram. Very important to normiefoids and kind of a soft red flag.

Very important to normiefoids and kind of a soft red flag.

The term is "pink flag".

Imagine society has devalued the concept of marriage to the point where to younger generations it's either just something religious people do or that people do for convenience (taxes, finances, immigration, etc...), you end up eventually needing to reinvent a concept to separate the "trial run" of being with someone and a serious long-term partnership with someone.

I've seen this manifest as "girlfriend" vs "partner" but I have yet to see "committed but unlabeled" and "girlfriend".

I know, it's dumb. My pet theory is that some people think that, by avoiding formalising a relationship by putting the associated labels on it, they can therefore protect themselves from emotional disruption. Obviously, this is silly: if you like someone and are dating them to the exclusion of all others, it's going to hurt if they break it off with you even if you never explicitly declared them your boy/girlfriend.

  1. timeline from first meeting (i was old, she was new joining at workplace) when i wasn't thinking about new relationship TO serious thinking 2 months. From serious thinking to "Surely this is the one" 3 months more.
  2. it was neck-to-neck for my case about seriousness about each other. (she proposed first though)
  3. mentioned above.
  4. No, there was nothing that was unacceptable. but my mentality has been - whatever was or could be a problem, i was / am sure to overcome it.
  5. when two people want each other in same order of magnitude (not lopsided like man wanting woman much more than she wanting him back OR vice versa), then there are so many things which become smooth. Then there is no need to do bookkeeping of who did what and how much for whom. I think, i only realize now when that sort of thing is not needed to be done and how easy it makes life for both the persons.

Some other thoughts:

  1. i had some sort of long list of things we realized for each other - at that time, i had put something like our relationship has reached level 1, 2, and so on for 18-19 levels till i counted. after that, i stopped.
  2. for us, time didn't matter. at one time, it was a possibility that we would not be able to see each other for a long time - and it was okay. it didn't change the internal feelings.
  3. it all was a gut feeling kind of thing. i can still remember the first day when i saw her coming into the common room and saying something to someone else (i can still remember the texture of the voice). maybe it can be labeled as serious attraction at first sight and first listen. all the mind's calculations were put aside by me (as such, i tend to be analyst, just not in this case). in this case, it was - this is really the one, whatever my mind says i will manage later. whether that is a good idea in all other cases, i don't know. this is n=1 situation.

To compare:

  1. this kind of thing had happened once before. but in that case, it was a feeling only in me and not the girl. Lopsided. Would have definitely failed later on, even if it would have been an arranged marriage sort of thing (Indian context).
  2. Other time, it was partly the opposite way. The girl had serious crush on me, and i didn't have (lopsided again). We still proceeded and it was a long drawn painful experience for each of us (she remained always insecure about me, being very jealous of my normal interactions with other people, lot of long drawn mega-fights taken to extremes). Eventually, parting away was the only way out. But it remained a really bad experience overall.
  3. few in-betweens, timepasses you can say.

In short, my personal mantras would be: nearly equal levels of attraction with each other, no deep insecurities in either of the persons, gut feeling and not completely mind / excel calculations.

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