Wwyd or am I just being an idiot

[TGItsNotChristmasAnymore]

When do you celebrate your anniversary? It's mine and my bf first anniversary of our first meeting soon, we have both referred to it as our first year together but I have reason to believe he was seeing (not sure sleeping with) but definitely meeting up with another woman at this point. I also have an idea that they met/planned to meet (I think she cancelled the last time) for at least five weeks into us seeing eachother (I have worked out that at least one meeting, (the last one) was arranged after we had slept with eachother. I can't be 100% sure of this but from the things I've worked out (put together after a throw away comment by him last week) I'm quite confident I'm barking up the right tree.
The thing is I don't want to celebrate 'our' anniversary if he was seeing someone else at that point,I know he will want to mark the occasion but I don't, not on that date. How would you explain this or am I just being a twat.

[AnyFucker]

Ask him ?

[sooperdooper]

Unless you'd said the first time you met you were exclusive from then on then it's still the anniversary you first met

[Ilovecaindingle]

We celebrate the night we met in a wine bar. Never had a night apart since that night!! Over 4 years ago!!
Would the date you both realised it was serious be acceptable to celebrate?

[Pringle2628]

My DP tries to claim when we first met as our anniversary and I'm like no way because for another 3 months you were dating other woman and I was dating other men, I didn't do anything more than basic dates but he was definitely doing more than dates! I refuse to have the day we became exclusive as our anniversary either as that's my sons birthday so I am happy to not celebrate anything until the day we marry.

[TheNaze73]

Just ask him!

[TGItsNotChristmasAnymore]

We slept together date four (brazen tart I know lol) the following date (couple of days later) we had the exclusive chat (he brought it up as one of his ex's was coming down to see him) we decided to be exclusive and like I said I'm now pretty confident he saw this other woman (not the ex, although he saw her too lol) at least once after that.
I think I'll just wait for him to mention making plans to mark the occasion, then say I'd prefer to do it another night for x reason.
I was just wondering what people classed as their anniversary.

[TGItsNotChristmasAnymore]

Perhaps we'll just not celebrate either pringle lol, I won't be marrying him though.

[AhYerWill]

I'm not sure I'd be celebrating at all if I'd just found out my partner cheated on me at the start of our relationship...

[Ellisandra]

Why bother?
Unless you're 13.

[Pringle2628]

Your not in a relationship from the day you meet it's not cheating!

[TGItsNotChristmasAnymore]

Nice elisandra, thanks for that, I thought most people celebrated the start of a relationship, nope definitely not 13, your comment definitely sounds like something my petulant teenager would say though.
Ah yer I haven't just found out, I had an idea at the start but I don't know he slept with her and it was early days so I'm not sure I could consider it as cheating.
I only posted the thread as I was just wondering if other people celebrated from their first date or something else.

[Ellisandra]

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be put down by your comparing me to your teen? I'm not.

Look, I don't know anyone that makes too big a deal of exact dates for th first year because at my age many new relationships among my friends have had exactly the same kind of fuzzy start.
If it goes somewhere, do you count it from the first meet, the exclusivity talk, or from the first email, if you talked for 2 weeks before?

If you want to have some kind of anniversary occasion then decide what makes sense to you - and tell him.

I wouldn't use your approach for two reasons.

Firstly, you want to mark it - if you want to, why are you waiting to see if he mentions it? Don't be passive. Tell him you'd like to.

And if you do want to sit back and wait for him... I think it's a bad thing to decide if he says one date, you'll say - no, later after we were exclusive. Even though that makes more sense to me in a sensible discussion, honestly I'd be pissed off if I proposed something nice, saying I saw it as something to be celebrated, only for my boyfriend to say "no, not counting that".

But mostly, I don't see the point in setting yourself up for disappointment if he is like me - a perfectly lovely committed partner, but one who sees marking longevity for its own sake as pretty pointless.

[TGItsNotChristmasAnymore]

I didn't expect you to be put down, I was just pointing out the irony in your comment as I found it rude and immature. Still on your other points, we have mentioned doing something and referred to that date, however now I just don't feel comfortable celebrating a date when I know he was seeing /meeting with someone else at that stage.
I was asking for comments on how others would breach the subject.
Clearly I was wrong in thinking unmarried couples celebrate anniversaries, I didn't think it was pointless thing to celebrate the start of a relationship.

[BadToTheBone]

I didn't know people celebrated the anniversary of when they got together, not something I'd do tbh. Hey ho, we're all different. If I were you I'd just celebrate the day as you see it and not care about this other woman, I certainly wouldn't see it as cheating when it was so early on.

[Ladyformation]

Ours is from our exclusivity talk which, given I'd been adamant that I wasn't looking for a relationship, was a pretty big deal. That was nearly five months after he first asked me out. Either do it from then or ask him

I don't get why there's this contingent on MN who think it's so juvenile to want to celebrate your relationship on one night a year..

[GinIsIn]

Well it depends on your relationship now, really. If a year on, you are living together or seeing each other a lot with plans for the future, just go with the day you met - that's the day that drew you together, after all!

If it's been a year of more casually seeing each other, then I would wait until you have something more concrete to celebrate.

[VivDeering]

You both agreed to be exclusive and then he slept with someone else?

Marking anniversaries is a very common thing to do - birthdays, wedding anniversaries, memorials etc.

[pocketsaviour]

I haven't ever marked that kind of anniversary in a non-married relationship. Well, not since I was in my teens.

Your anniversary is the day you got married. If you want to go out for a meal or something, just go. You don't need an excuse!

[TGItsNotChristmasAnymore]

I don't intend to marry him so there will never be a marriage anniversary, however we do live together and have a secure relationship so I would've thought it would be normal to mark passing years.
Like I said we've referred to our anniversary as the day we first met,it has only just become clear to me that he was still meeting with this other person after this date (I'm not sure if they slept together or not) so I'm not sure it can be counted as cheating. It's not that I don't feel I can't broach it with him it's just whether it's necessary to or not, I'll leave it, I'm probably looking into this too much and you're right who needs to celebrate, it's not a big deal. If he mentions doing something then I'll just politely explain why I'd rather not. Thanks for the opinions /advice.

[VivDeering]

Pocket, I think that it's a very human process to mark the anniversaries of events. There's tonnes of evidence for this! Personally, it's a big deal for me and I like to remember the date and exchange cards. I don't think that marriage defines anniversaries!

[TGItsNotChristmasAnymore]

Via deeming I agree, surely a couple who aren't married have as much want to celebrate their relationship as much as a married one,obviously one married you wouldn't celebrate both (unless it meant getting two presents lol). I thought every couple did this.

[TGItsNotChristmasAnymore]

So out of interest viv which date do you celebrate, date you meet/first date?

[TGItsNotChristmasAnymore]

Excuse the name typos, damn autocorrect

[VivDeering]

Well, we talked about it and agreed to use a day that I felt met my totally subjective and illogical definition of a date and we shared our first kiss. So neither the first meeting nor our first date