Should you wait until you’re in love before getting into a relationship ?

[Ellamaee]

Hi everyone I hope this is going to make sense but I’m worried . So I’ve been seeing this guy for just over a month now and it’s going well. He said if all goes well he’d ask me to be his girlfriend but would wait until about 3 months in however last night we were talking about it and he said he’s only been in love ONCE out of his THREE relationships but still loved the other 2. He said getting into a relationship and saying you love them is normal but not actually be IN love until about a year in or whenever feels right . Should you not be IN LOVE before getting into a relationship? I’m worried I fall in love and he just “loves me but not in love” should I wait until he’s in love before making it a relationship ? He said loving has different stages and getting into a relationship means building up to being in love but I’m not sure what to do! Any experiences ?

That’s not true because I’m not in love either so why would I get him to love me ? We were talking about future reference not present time !🤣

ADHD can make you feel “all in” with things instantly, yes, but then it’s on you to recognise if that’s genuine love for HIM or if it’s very heightened emotion in general and a need to be loved as you’ve described here. It takes time to figure it out. Feeling something one instant and running with it sounds exactly what he’s trying to avoid. Is there any chance he’s ASD? I ask because the ADHD girl/ASD boy relationship dynamic is.. well, iconic. And for a reason. Their patient “think it all out first” and “follow the rules” approach is a very good match for our all or nothing.

This is the farthest from true I don’t even love him yet! We were talking about the future not right now

God, yes, the modern way is soooo over dramatic and unnecessary.

I wouldn’t quite call it girlfriend and boyfriend after just one date though. In my day (90s) you’d go on a date and if you liked them you’d both go “oh I had a nice night, it would be good to do it again if you want to.” And then you’d arrange another one. And it would just continue from there. Or not, if you decided to tell them you didn’t think you were quite right for each other.

maybe after 4 dates or so you’d jokingly say “so is this the point we can refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend?”

What didn’t happen was messing around with any other blokes, also going on dates with them at the same time. That was really frowned on. People just wouldn’t have accepted it. No-one wants to do the “pick me dance.” I don’t know how or why the dates with multiple people at the same time has suddenly become acceptable ( and indeed how people even have time in their lives for that).

is it the Love Island influence or something, all this “so are we exclusive?” nonsense. It’s really boring the way people drone on about it.

I just wasn’t sure , I thought to be in a relationship you had to be in love first , maybe that’s where I go wrong in relationships 🤣

How can you be in love with someone you're not yet in a relationship with?! You start dating, as time goes on and you get to know each other better, either you fall in love or you don't and you eventually split. Maybe it's just me but I don't ever remember anyone overthinking all this relationship business back in the 90s. We went out for drinks, got to know people, and took it from there

So you are seeing each other, neither of you love the other yet, but you are asking him when he thinks he will love you?

We both said we think he’s autistic , you couldn’t tell by first impressions but we do deffo think there’s something ! Is it? I thought it would be disaster 🤣

I think love, true love, develops over time. You can date, be in a monogamous relationship before you reach that deep love, because in my experience it's not something I'd feel after a month.

I think you are over thinking things, have fun, see where it goes

Several thoughts on this:

Your ADHD is making you massively over-think this.
Find other things to think about: how is the rest of your life? Friends, family, work and/or studying, career plans, hobbies and interests - your relationship status should not be the single most important thing.

It is just playing with words in the end, but to my mind "being in love" comes first, and "loving" comes later. You can "be in love" from first sight - it is all to do with projection, fantasy, limerence, lust, crush, obsession, and a whole load of stuff that is irrelevant to whether you actually know the person.
Real love requires that you truly know the person and it only deepens with time.
I think your BF has it back to front, but as I said, it is just playing with the definitions of words and it is not really important how you label it.

It doesn't matter when a BF says "I love you" - some can say it within a few weeks and it doesn't mean much. Some don't say it for years.
What really matters is how he treats you - actions speak louder than words.

You should not be talking with him about his previous girlfriends, let alone when he first "loved" them. That is just feeding your anxiety and is not healthy. His past relationships are irrelevant.
If he starts talking about them, or starts up these ridiculous conversations about how he feels and when he might feel this or that in the future and how he labels it, shut it down. Change the subject. Tell him that you want to talk about XYZ, or it is time to go and do ABC.
Show by your actions that you are not interested in playing silly mind-games and word-games.

Your fear of being hurt is understandable, but life and love are about taking risks. Just go with what you feel, let yourself be open to feeling deeply, and see how it turns out. Enjoy the process of dating and getting to know each other. That is all there is to it.

not just me we both did . He’s a slow burner where as I’m not , so it’s good to have those conversations in my case anyway

Oh yes, how did I know 🤣

Ying and yang, baby! Meet each other in the middle, be patient with each others difficulties and ways. mine is genuinely the best relationship I’ve ever been in. We understand each other in such a beautiful way and we are really open and respect we both are how we are.

Thank you everyone for the replies , what I’ve learnt is real love develops over time and it takes to be in a relationship to discover it . And also to not overthink it . Thank you 🥰

And I do believe that love really can develop through shared lives because the couple I know who are most close in their 50's had an arranged marriage, they are so loved up ! She reckons it took over a year before she was truly comfortable around him and love really did grow steadily, they had been together years before she would agree to have dc, but now you cannot tell they had an arranged marriage

I love this!! Thank you 🥰

Im nearly 60 and this new approach to dating baffles me.

The old fashioned way where we met someone we liked, went on a date, decided if we liked each other enough to have more dates and at that point we were bf and gf, none of the exclusive chat/wait and see before we label it.

And love developed over time. From realising we liked this person, to really liking them and then realising we were in love but if we waited til we were in love to start a relationship, most of us would be waiting a long time.

Thank you ! I can see his point now 🥰

The spirit of Princess Diana is coming through strongly with this one.

He said if all goes well he’d ask me to be his girlfriend but would wait until about 3 months in

I would walk the fuck away from this attempt to dangle you from a string.

I think one of the big changes is SM. It’s easy if it’s just amongst yourselves to say “we are dating, we are therefore boyfriend/girlfriend” but that then quickly leads to putting it online. As soon as it’s online, everyone is in your business. Everyone knows you’re “together” and if it doesn’t work out it’s another “failed” relationship. Another notch on the bedpost, ye know?

A lot of the “seeing each other” chat I feel comes from this, being committed to someone but still allowing privacy before it get announced/made “official” in this way. It’s actually very easy for people to feel trapped as soon as it is online and all their family and friends know that’s their partner now. You just want time to figure out if this is really someone you want to commit to (ie, the dating stage). You still do see them as a boyfriend/girlfriend but like I say, breathing room. As soon as it’s all online it’s a case of meeting the parents and aunties and grandparents in one fell swoop!

Modern life IS different now, it’s absolutely not as simple but there are genuine reasons behind it.

This. Everything had to be pored over and labelled now, it sounds exhausting.

Surely the solution to this is not announce anything on social media, there's no need.

This all seems so complicated - and I think half the problem is labelling all the different stages of a relationship (including 'relationship'). In my eyes, the point at which you are dating you are having some sort of a relationship. It might not be serious. It might eventually become serious. Or it might not. In my experience, the point at which I started seeing someone regularly was the point at which they became 'boyfriend' (without anybody needing to declare that the case). The 'I love you' stuff came later after we'd got to know each other better and those feelings had developed. I think trying to differentiate between 'love' and 'in love' is a bit weird - to me, the only time there is a difference is when it is platonic, and so you might love a friend, but not be 'in love' with them. If someone is sleeping with you, then I would expect any talk of love to be the 'in love' type.

💯- all this FB official nonsense after a few weeks makes me cringe.

Maybe some people need to learn to have a life away from SM - it’s not difficult.

Seems to me to be a lot of overthinking going on here. If you are enjoying being together and not doing any other stuff on the side with other people, then just go with the flow and stop labelling everything. Trying to categorise types of love seems quite crackers.

Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. But then people often consider the relationship truly “official” when someone goes from single to “in a relationship with X” like on FB.

If you use FB, Eventually it’s gonna happen. It’s not a bad thing. But you don’t want to be changing it every time you go on a bloody date 😂