“Are We Exclusive?” What To Consider Before You Answer This Question

It’s not a simple answer

Photo by Kate Hliznitsova on Unsplash

After 12 dates, he asked me, “Are we exclusive?”

Of course, me being me, the simple question didn’t yield a simple yes or no answer. Instead, it generated a flurry of talking (ad nauseam!), reading, and, now, writing this article.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason I’ve been called ‘over-analytical’.

Talking (Ad Nauseam!)

“Oh my God, that’s so great,” my 22-year-old personal trainer-in-training gushed.

She handed me a 20-pound dumbbell. In between my grunt-laden, aptly-named, goblin squats, we girl-talked about our dating lives.

She’s dealing with a guy she really likes who she’s been ‘talking to’ for over a year, but he’s squeamish about boyfriend-girlfriend labels. Technically, they’re not exclusive. She’s ‘free’ to date other guys, but he knows she won’t.

If her non-committal guy would ask her to be exclusive, she’d be ecstatic.

But as she congratulated me for my guy’s willingness to be exclusive, I started wondering why I felt some sort of reservation about his request for exclusivity.

That’s when it happens, when the ‘being over-analytical’…