I have a lot of sayings in this business but the one that is most true is “The ones that start fast, end fast.”
From my Bulletin Board: “The ones that start fast, end fast.” I encourage my clients to focus on a friendship the first three months they are dating someone. Initially everyone puts their best foot forward, it’s human nature, you want them to like you and they want you to like them. It is right at the three month mark that people get relaxed enough to be themselves and that is when you begin to identify the things that do or don’t work. If you focus on a friendship during that time and you discover it is not going to work it is much easier to walk away if you have not been intimate. I also encourage my clients to keep their options open when they are first starting to get to know someone and meet at least one more person. Exploring your options and having a basis of comparison will also keep you from rushing into a relationship too quickly. Three months is not a long time to invest, and if the friendship is right everything else will just naturally fall into place.
Hardly a week goes by where this does not happen. In the interview I always mention it because it is so prevalent but it continues to happen so consistently that it does not surprise me anymore.
In just one day today I had four separate conversations where this applied.
One couple met three weeks ago. They have already been intimate and she called him to say she had kissed someone else and was not sure how she felt about him or the other man.
Another couple has dated for just two weeks but they have seen each other every day since they met. He runs hot and cold about how he feels and was receiving text messages from a previous girlfriend while they were on a date.
The third couple just met and she was his first match but he is already “on hold” and does not want to meet anyone else. In the interview one week ago he agreed with me that even if he liked the first lady he met he would keep his options open and meet one more lady. Not so, he thinks she is the one. Actually, I think he could be right, it happens occasionally that the first one is the right one.
The fourth one is a client who met someone on her own and thought he was “the one”…How long did it last? Three months. THREE MONTHS!!
It is the most telling time in a new relationship and if people would just focus on a friendship for three months there would be a lot less heartache if it ends. Once you are physically involved, you are emotionally involved and it takes the focus off the friendship and puts it on the intimacy.
It is not like a haven’t experienced it myself, so I know how easily it can happen, but that only reinforces my belief that you should wait three months before you are intimate with someone. REALLY…three months is not that long to wait. Stay FOCUSED…no sex for the first three months!