We all love the excitement of dating someone new, but when the time comes to get serious with one person and one person only – things can get a little complicated. Dating as an adult isn’t like when you were younger and you simply talked on the phone or sat together at lunch, well, for most of us anyway. Now, relationships can mean marriage, babies and lifelong commitments.

This huge milestone can actually raise a lot of questions for both parties and if not handled correctly, could cause stress and anxiety – especially when it’s not yet “official.”

Given all the complexities of commitment, how do you know when the time is right to take the plunge? And how do you announce your relationship status to each other, let alone others?

To find a general consensus on these topics and more, we surveyed over 1,000 Europeans and Americans who had been in at least one romantic relationship and discovered some interesting trends when making the move from “just friends” to an “official couple”.

Story of Us

As a child, you might have heard the saying, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in the baby carriage.” However, as you will now know, there are many unique paths to love, as evidenced in our survey results.

On average, single people surveyed agreed that before making any commitments, you should spend the night at the other person’s place, have sex, meet each other’s friends, and reveal a personal flaw or secret about yourself. These are all steps that could help you really get to know each other, which is pretty important before deciding whether you want to become exclusive.

This being said, we discovered some interesting differences between single people’s ideal relationship timelines and partners’ actual timelines. On average, single people thought it was important to have sex before making their relationship official; however, most of those in a relationship actually waited until shortly afterwardsmitted people also waited longer after making it official before meeting each other’s family and saying “I love you.”

Becoming Official

On average, single people thought they should wait over two months before becoming official. Specifically, single women believed it was appropriate to wait for 2.6 months before entering an exclusive relationship, and single Gen Xers thought they should wait for 2.4 months. Millennials, on the other hand, were OK with becoming exclusive just before the two-month mark. Millennials may be known for just going for it, as they are much more likely to jump into a relationship quickly.

Even though single people were happy to make it official at around two months, they didn’t think they should flaunt this new relationship on social media for another 2.6 months after that. This is surprising considering this generation are assumed to post everything they do on social media, with many people around chicas sexy de Asia the world on these platforms.

Eighty percent of people in a relationship specifically talked with their current partner about becoming exclusive. Those conversations are important because it allows both parties to know, for certain, the parameters or boundaries of the relationship. Whether you’re in an open or monogamous relationship, there are many ways to have “the talk,” so choose an environment in which your partner will feel the most comfortable and where dialogue can properly go ahead.

However, if 80% discussed it first, this means the other 20% may have just assumed the relationship was already committed. This could be because two people are aligned with each other so don’t necessarily need words to invoke their devotion. Opening up and confiding in each other, supporting each other’s endeavours and being comfortable and satisfied with intimacy (physical or emotional) are all important in a strong, healthy relationship.