to not accept that this is a "thing" that most people do?

[PyongyangKipperbang]

Woman I work with is early 20's and has been with her OH for six moths. She was getting really pissed off with him because he hadnt asked her to be his GF. Me and another colleague (just turned 30), both said that after 6 months being BF/GF was a given surely, they had had the "exclusive" conversation a few weeks in. Imo thats when they became an official couple but she insists not.

Then she came into work all smiles as he had officially asked her and it involved a fancy meal, flowers, that sort of thing....basically a mini proposal!

She insists that this is how it should be done and that until the man asks the woman to be his GF they are still just dating. She was genuinely surprised when other colleague and I said that we had never done this and had never heard of it.

I think this is a) not a thing and b) nuts, but am I wrong and out of date given I am in my fifties?

Strangely it’s a thing. My DS 30 was chatting to me about how he’s goingvto have the conversation with his (I thought) girlfriend next weekend about whether they’re a couple. I’d been under the impression that she was his girlfriend for the last 8 months!!

That’s basically it. I hear so many people - usually women - being strung along waiting to be asked . All the while they are doing the usual girlfriend/boyfriend things. It’s ridiculous.

So yeah OP, unfortunately it is very much a thing for people nowadays especially those under 30.

A few years back back I told a man if he still couldn’t decide I was his girlfriend after 6 weeks of “exclusive dating” then sex was off the cards as I don’t have sex with men I’m not in a relationship with . He was fuming.

He started breadcrumbing me thinking I’d run back and jump in his bed, but I completely cut him off.

So it goes :

Dating - then exclusive dating- then boyfriend/girlfriend chat 🤦🏽‍♀️

My first boyfriend was in 1994. We snogged when drunk, slept together and that was it. I think he may have asked if we were going out together after a week or two.

We never "dated". We got drunk with friends, went raving in groups, but always ended up in the same bed which was sweet.

My current partner of 4 years - we are both early 50s. We slept together the second time we met. The third time we met, he told me to tell him if anyone else "turned my head" (this was his way of saying we shouldn't sleep with anyone else). After two months I was in the room when he described me to his friend on the phone as his girlfriend and stopped to ask me - "Is that ok?"

I've never dated.

She’s not my friend, it’s someone I know.

sorry? Point still stands though

It does appear to be a thing. Whenever I referred to my son’s gf he’d say they hadn’t had the talk yet so not officially bf/gf. But you’ve been going out for months? Yes but we haven’t had the talk. Well for goodness sake have the talk! They had the talk and now the’ve been bf & gf for 9 months but dating a year. Sheesh (late teens/20).

My Ds 17 asked for money to take the girl
he’d been seeing for several months out for a meal to officially ask her to be his girlfriend 😂
I was like “wtf”??

She agreed - and then dumped him soon after!

I need to? It’s completely acceptable on social media which is where most of this bollocks is peddled.

I’m mid-thirties and 15 years ago my now DH asked me ‘will you be my girlfriend’ before we did anything other than kiss.. seen as old-fashioned at the time but that meant we were exclusive and both knew where we stood. It wasn’t a mini proposal just a straightforward question from a decent guy :)

Not you personally....😄

Yes it's ridiculous. It's all done in stages now. After a certain length of dating they then become ' exclusive'. My ds split with his long term gf then they got back together but wouldn't admit they were back together, then after a few more months of this denial they went ' exclusive' again and then he could announce that yes she was actually his gf again ( which we had all known for months anyway ) .My dd on the other hand was asked to be ' exclusive' quite quickly which she was overjoyed about. My other ds seems to be the sensible one- started seeing his gf at aged 16 and there has never been anyone else she was his gf from day one and still together seven years later !

Shit. I’m married, have lived together for six years, have a joint account, mortgage and a dog and planning a baby soon but I’ve just realised he never officially asked me to be his gf, nor did we ever ‘define exclusivity’ - FWIW, I assumed this was implied from the first date tbh!

28 here and I totally agree with you, OP.

My DD was amazed that exclusivity was the given right from the start in my day. Two-timing not acceptable at all. I'm early 70s.

As an aside, in the part of the North I'm from it was often called courting, though the expression was seen as old-fashioned by the youth in the early 70s.

You’re saying it’s outside the norm…..I speak with lots of young women/girls and they believe it’s very ‘normal’
If the woman I spoke about was my ‘friend’ I’d try to persuade her she’s worth more. That’s the relevance

So at the beginning rather than after months of exclusive dating?

It does seem a bit odd to me, but I come from a generation if you went on a second date and wanted a third that was it, done deal, unspoken. I guess the newer method does make things less ambiguous, I just don’t understand why it’s weeks or months down the line.

And this 'exclusive' nonsense.. In my day, you went out with a lassie and you might've suspected there could be another couple of other guys hanging about in the background, but that just made you have to up your game and make sure the lassie liked you the best and dumped them. 😄

Not on the level you are talking about but I think it was a "thing" when I was a teenager (mid 00s). When 13/14 a boy would just ask "will you be my girlfriend" often by text.
Late teens you'd have 3/4 dates then usually the boy would ask you to be his girlfriend.

I met my husband in my early 20s and he asked me to be his girlfriend.

@saltinesandcoffeecups I don't think i ever knew anyone who was 'dating'. Usually a couple of dates would be too see if you were then going to go out with someone, which always seemed more fixed than dating.

I only remember one actual date with dh, which was the week after we'd met. Maybe because we'd met as a one night stand, meeting for a date was just an irritating pre cursor to the main event. I mainly remember him coming round and cooking for me because my cupboards were so sad. I guess I'd have said I had started 'seeing someone'.

As a teen/ student, it was more going round each others' houses, or getting off with each other in the corner of a pub/ club on a night out with a range of mates. Maybe it was the circles I moved in, but no one 'dated'.

This is awkward, as I think I’ve just found out I’m only dating my husband. I don’t remember ever being asked to be his girlfriend, and I just decided we were getting married, neither of us asked the other. How embarrassing.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong in that, no one says will you be my wife is hilariously 5 year old. It’s the dating for month’s before asking that is weird.

Well you’d better have the talk now! How lax of you both 😁

Yeah right at the beginning. @pontipinemum describing it a few years earlier is maybe why we were seen as a bit old-fashioned in our group of friends because I think lots of people were not having ‘the chat’ so they could sleep around if they wanted to

Yes it’s a thing and I know because I got it wrong with my DD. She had met a boy, he spent time at ours, she stayed at his, he even came on holiday with us and socialised with our friends. One night when out with friends I said it was absolutely ridiculous that they won’t call themselves boyfriend and girlfriend and that it was insulting to everyone. This was all said with humour, if you can imagine. So, with some good natured pressure from mutual friends, they agreed that fine, they were boyfriend and girlfriend.

Well, I thought this was a very good thing, and now at least they knew where they both stood. But no, I’d messed it all up and he didn’t get to do the big Instagram proposal. Ridiculous!

That's the worst of both worlds...

I think they've been watching too much love island, they basically do a wedding proposal to ask someone to be their gf now, it is bizarre. I'm in my early 40's, I met my husband over 20 years ago, we met, went on a few dates, then became boyfriend and girlfriend, it was a brief conversation "shall we be bf and gf... yes that would be nice". Now there are many many stages before being promoted to the official bf/gf title, they are getting to know other people at the same time (snogging and probably more with multiple people), then they dating (still multiple people), then they become exclusive (because of course you are dating several people and being exclusive is a label in itself not just assumed as I did back in the day), before eventually made an official gf/bf (probably via a beach proposal complete with candles or rose petals in the shape of a heart, photoshoot style photos essential). I feel exhausted thinking about it, I've probably missed out a few stages too.

I find it v odd that you refer to this girls unofficial boyfriend as her OH assuming you mean "other half" isn't this used more for husband and wife or people together for a very long time? An unofficial boyfriend of less than 6 months is not your other half now! Almost as bad as on here when people refer to their boyfriend of 30 seconds who they don't live with as their "partner", nope, that'd be your boyfriend you see for a few hours at the weekend.