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Short Term Relationships
Can Have Long Term
Consequences
There's some conceptual overlap between short term relationships and casual relationships
, so let's differentiate between the two. We use the phrase short term relationships to mean relationships of short duration and casual relationships to mean relationships that are structured informally or are entirely unstructured.
Within those definitions, it's possible to have short duration relationships that are not casual (occasionally someone in show business will have a whirlwind romance, get married, split up and begin seeking an annulment all in the same week). And casual relationships sometimes continue for many years without ever reaching a formal level.
But are short term relationships
a good thing or a bad thing?
For a lot of guys just starting out (and who are having great difficulty attracting female interest), short term relationships are not very appealing.
Short term relationships
can easily go bad
To them, it took so much time, effort and luck to finally find someone who said yes that the last thing they want is to have to repeat that stressful process anytime soon.
Instead, they want to lock in their arrangement before she comes to her senses and seeks out someone more confident and charming. So within a few weeks or months, insecure guys will often be pushing her to marry him (and often want to get her pregnant too).
Is that a good idea?
Not at all. That's because every now and then short term relationships will end up evolving and enduring, but most times they fizzle out pretty quickly.
And if he managed to "lock her in" via marriage and/or pregnancy, he's apt to get a very rude awakening: he'll be locked in financially but she'll have no obligation whatsoever to actually continue interacting with him (in bed or otherwise).
“… if you have a "really bad feeling" about a relationship early on, you're probably right …”
Our suggestion is to not worry about relationship duration, since it's very difficult to predict at the start of any relationship what its ultimate longevity will be. False negatives do tend to be rare in the sense that if you have a "really bad feeling" about a relationship early on, you're probably right.
But false positives are extremely common. If you were to look closely at the relationships of couples who later ended up in the nastiest, most venomous divorces imaginable, most of those couples will have been convinced at an early stage that their relationship was special and that their love would last forever. How wrong they were!
Therefore, the best advice we can give guys is to ...
Tread slowly when
entering relationships
Take each day as it comes. If you're treated well, and if you and she are both happy, then it's worth keeping the relationship going. But if and when you reach the point where the relationship just isn't working for you any more, then it's time to end things as amicably as you can and move on.
And because very few relationships last forever (just as very few jobs these days will turn out to be "jobs for life"), caution is always needed before formalizing long term relationships.
What's more, here's one iron-clad relationship suggestion we can make: there's a tremendous benefit in improving your "game" with women, simply because you won't be terrified of letting go when a relationship isn't meeting your needs.
Want more?
Learn about casual relationships and how they differ from short term relationships, or improve other aspects of your understanding of relationships with the material referenced on our
Relationship Advice for Men page.
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