How Far Is Too Far: Planning Your Long Term Relationship

When one of my friends gets a new boyfriend, I either hear an “Oh, we’re going to be together forever” speech or an “I don’t think I like him that much, we’ll probably break up soon” comment. I’ve always thought of myself as falling in the middle of these two categories, but an argument with my boyfriend made me think of how long I thought we could really go.

Even though it’s still the summer, my best friends and I have started talk of what to do for spring break. We were thinking of more people to invite and I brought the request up to my current boyfriend.

“If we’re still together by March, would you want to come to Mexico with us?” I asked.

“What do you mean ‘if’?” he replied. “Are you saying you think we’ll break up in the next few months?”

This exchange of words was followed by a rather long argument in which he thought I was being mean and I thought he was being unreasonable. I mean, if you’ve only been going out for 5 months, how far in advance should you really plan? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve planned parts of relationships before but they’ve never quite turned out the way I wanted.

The only long-term relationship I’ve ever had was with a guy who was my first boyfriend, first kiss, first everything basically, and I thought it was one of those “Oh, we’re going to be together forever” type deals. We were so ’serious’ we had even talked about baby names (I cringe even typing that). Fast forward a year and a half later and we had broken up because I had finally realized what a jealous control freak he was. Not exactly the “forever” scene I had thought of. But I’ll chalk that one up to being 15 and dumb.

But then my last relationship consisted of me buying a Christmas present for my boyfriend three weeks in advance, assuming of course that we would still be together by that day. To my surprise, he dumped me two weeks before Christmas and I was left with tears and a pair of non-refundable gauge earrings. Not to mention I felt completely stupid for thinking we could keep our relationship intact for a few oncoming weeks.

So after all of that, I am definitely hesitant to think more then a few days in advance. Who knows how things will go tomorrow with the boyfriend let alone seven months from now? But is it better to be safe then sorry when in a relationship?

Or should we all just toss our doubts to hell and plan our honeymoon with the guy we’ve been dating for a couple months?

[photo from jupiterimages]