Part 2 - Tips to find your person within 12 months
- Keep your text conversations to 30 minutes for the first two days. After that, suggest a voice or video call, but keep it under 10 minutes. Set an alarm if needed to remind you that 10 minutes means 10 minutes.
- If you’re both in town, plan to meet in person over the weekend. Even if it takes 2 hours to cover 5 km, limit the meeting to 20-30 minutes. By this point, you’ve spoken, heard, and met this person, giving you a sense of who they are. The tab at the coffee shop, chai tapri, darshini, or a fine dining spot should be shared equally even if one among you is not financially independent
- Your initial meeting might go well or maybe fall short of your expectations, it happens. Don’t overthink or look for chemistry right away instead reflect on why you decided to meet them in the first place. If something about their profile intrigued you, keep that in mind. Think about 1 or more things you liked about the person. Minor dislikes, like their dressing or eating habits, shouldn’t be deal-breakers. Focus on your must-haves as discussed in step 2.
- If you decide to continue seeing the person, increase your interaction time by 10 minutes with each meeting. Once you’re comfortable spending 60 minutes together, keep the conversations light, get to know each other’s friends, family, work, and more.
- After meeting 4-5 times, decide if you want to go exclusive. This means focusing on getting to know each other better and informing others you’ve been seeing simultaneously that you’re focusing on one person. Once exclusive, you can have longer interactions, but shift them to activities like walks, runs, or trying something new together like a singing class, learning how to cook etc
- Highly recommended – Do 2 things, decide what you wish to do first
(a) Introduce each other to your closest friends. This helps you see how they behave around their friends and confirms they’re genuine.
(b)Spend a weekend together to learn more about each other.
- It may be 7-10 weeks of knowing each other now, this is when you should allow emotions and attraction develop. Until now, treat each other as new friends. Now you are comfortable with each other, have discussions around commitment, understand that it means making the relationship work no matter what. Labels like marriage, live-in, or companionship will follow naturally.
- Now you are a couple. Once in a relationship, continue to be the same person you were before meeting each other. Keep practicing self-love, self-improvement, and avoid overthinking or making assumptions. Accept mistakes, listen when communicated with, and appreciate your partner. Keep in mind when you were single you were answerable only to yourself, but now that you are not, you are answerable to the partner too. Many a times you will wish to pull your hair or theirs (if they have it:)) which is fine, its part of being in a healthy relationship.
Remember, you both are unique and there’s something special about each other thus your relationship.
You have questions and are looking for a safe space to discuss then this link may be helpful - https://forms.gle/9sdumrJPs5NBmWkaA
Join andwemet's single community for 30s & beyond here https://linktr.ee/meaningfulrelationship