I once had a three-year relationship with a man where we had sex and we spent every day together. After about six months of our casual relationship, I wanted to know whether our relationship was serious or not. But not once did he ask the question: Would you be my girlfriend? So I asked him whether we should be. He kept quiet, thought about it for a bit, asked me a few questions, and said ok. Let’s state our relationship title as boyfriend and girlfriend. I imagined feeling ecstatic. But somehow, the event ended up feeling very hollow and empty. In a way, I felt like I had convinced him to be my boyfriend, but it didn’t feel right.
I think I got lucky in that relationship. The man I was dating felt strongly enough about me to decide to put a title to our casual relationship and make it into a serious one. But for so many other women, they get into a casual relationship, and even after years of seeing that same man exclusively, he has managed to convince her that ‘relationship titles aren’t important’.
Later on, I experienced this too with another man I seriously saw as the father of my future children. And I loved him so much, got so attached to him, that after two years, when he said: ‘Marriage is only a piece of paper. It doesn’t guarantee anything’, ‘I see you everyday, isn’t that enough?’, ‘Don’t you know I love you?’, ‘Why do you need me to prove my love to you with a piece of paper?’, etc. I convinced myself that maybe he had a point. Maybe it wasn’t important. And if I really loved him, I wouldn’t force him into making a decision he didn’t want to make right now. So I waited. In the end, he broke my heart, and left me because he fell in love with another girl.
The point I want to make here is that you are entitled to want what you want. You don’t need any other reason to want what you want, except that ‘you want it’. If you are in a relationship with a man who truly loves you the way you want to be loved, he will do his best to make you happy. If he is serious about your relationship, he will want to give your relationship a clear title. He will want you to be off-limits to other men. He will be the one desperate to make you his.
So if you calmly let the man you are dating right now know that having a relationship title is important to you, and you can’t be in a relationship with him without it, and he still doesn’t budge, it’s time to choose to do the best thing for you and leave.
Men will give you valid reasons for not wanting to commit to a relationship yet. But don’t you see that there will always be reasons for and against any decision? And you want him to choose to be with you, no matter what, right? You deserve to be cherished, loved and adored by the man you love. Give yourself that gift, and protect your heart, the way a man who truly loves you would. I’ve found my prince. When will you?