Quote:
Dear Locke,
Oh pfffttt I say fuck modesty. And experience? It doesn't matter if you've laid five girls or five thousand girls, so long as the girls you laid were ones you really wanted to lay. If you have the ability to make someone's life better, to help someone achieve success in their interactions with the opposite sex, then DO SO---you have certainly done that on numerous occasions on the board---and more power to you! You know all this of course, so I'm just adding filler here to make my first post here somewhat more substantial than a one liner:
How soon after you've been dating a girl do you have "the talk" about the nature of the relationship, whether it be an LTR or FB arrangement.
Roads, thanks for the sincerely kind words! Questions, big or small, are welcome on this thread.
And your question may seem short, but it is a good question with a somewhat long answer - being: You
don't have "the talk" about the nature of the relationship. At least not yet. As soon as you know what
you want, and you think you know what
she wants, then set a dynamic rather than an expectation.
Decide whether you want to base the dynamic off of what she is looking for, or base the dynamic off of what you are seeking. Take several of the major gears of a personal relationship: comfort, rapport, sexual tension, and emotional investment and use them a certain way.
If you want to
follow her goals, then
match the rapport, comfort, sexual tension and investment that she is giving. If you want to have her follow
your direction of the relationship, then work with onion
layering (building of all of them, while opening yourself up progressively) but stop layering as soon as you have reached a point where you both feel good. Then just maintain that level of those characteristics. You'll want to reach a point of contention, then remove or add the listed characteristics as you see fit for each situation.
However, if you want to
advance things to a further level then you need to systematically
apply more of each. As you peel away at your onion, taking her to deeper and deeper levels, you will have to increase comfort, build rapport, maintain sexual tension, and devote more emotion. She will, as long as you judged what she wanted correctly, follow along and reciprocate in the same layering way. Push a little bit more and more and you will stretch the relationship to wherever you want. Similarly to the previous application, as soon as she stops going deeper, you should also stop progressing through your onion. This is a wall; and these will be scattered throughout, but there will also be one blocking their final 'core'. I can't advise on hurdling that wall, as it will be different for each relationship and person. But don't let the wall stop you reaching what you want. I've you have gotten this far, then it will just taked a little bit of proverbial pushing to get your partner where you want them. It isn't a bad thing, because they do want it; they just have uncertainties.
Regardless of which of those options you choose, they all have the same basis. By "onioning," things will work in such a way that you will both have the mutual understanding of where you are with each other, and what you are to each other. You won't have to have the talk because you'll both already know.
In some cases (of course, the ones that prove me wrong

, or in future situations where you might actually need to
hear it come from her mouth; or where she would actually like to have a concrete
verbal discussion then it will be appropriate to communicate on top of onioning. You will know if that day comes; and when it does (if it should, it will), then there is no problem with talking about it. The only reason to ignore that subject otherwise, is because with that talk comes "the label." And we all know in modern society with a label comes a pre-described model that people have to fit. That will put a stress on the two of you; if you two are not ready for the discussion, then that stress will undoubtedly create more negatives than positives.
[side note: it is always good, when both parties are ready, after things have been layered, to discuss monogamy. The two of you might be at the same (or even different) levels, but monogamy should never be understood or expected. That is something you should always talk about....because even if they are in your core, doesn't mean your sexual interactions are limited to them, or their's to yours.]