Definition, Not Love, Makes the World Go Round

Well, it’s official…M. Perfect and I are a couple. It took a long, long time, but we’ve finally defined the relationship. We spent the weekend at M. Perfect’s dad’s home with most of his family and everything was perfectly couplehood bliss. We had all gone grocery shopping together, cooked together, had a picnic, and generally enjoyed having a low-key weekend chatting and hanging out.

On our way home, M. Perfect confessed that his ex, Ms. Ghost, had only hung out with his family twice. I was shocked…in two years, she had only met his family twice. I had already spent two weekends at his dad’s, met his mom once, and hung out with his brother a handful of times. This seemed promising. If he’s comfortable with me hanging out with his family, did this mean he was ready for more?

Later that night, we finally had the defining the relationship (DTR) talk (again):

Me: So tell me about your last date…

M. Perfect: It was a while ago. Probably about two months ago. What do you want to know?

Me: How did it happen? Did you ask her out? Did she ask you out?

M. Perfect: Usually through friends of friends. One of us might say, “We should grab dinner sometime,” but I never wanted anything to happen. It was just nice meeting new people. I would tell them that I was already seeing you.

Me: Oh. But you haven’t been on a date in 2 months? Why?

M. Perfect: I guess I didn’t want to. We spend so much time together and I’ve been so busy with work. How about you? When was your last date?

Me: Uhh...(long pause)…about two weeks ago. (At this point, mentioning that it was Match.com date is probably not a good idea.)

M. Perfect: It’s okay, I trust you.

Me: What exactly do you trust me to do or not to do? We’re not exclusive. We have no commitment to each other.

M. Perfect: I still trust you.

Me: So does the fact that we’re not dating anyone else mean that we’re exclusive?

M. Perfect: In my mind, we have been exclusive.

Me: But just because you act like you’re exclusive doesn’t mean you want to be. Intention is not the same as behavior.

So I guess we’re exclusive, but I still have no idea whether he wanted to be or not. How is it that we talk for hours and hours, but we have no idea what the other person said?

What I think I heard is that we are exclusive and have been for a while. All we’ve done is defined it.