Articles & Advice

Welcome to our first blog entry ... Let us introduce ourselves in a nutshell.

Jeanette: I'm Jeanette. I'm in a nutshell. How did I get into this nutshell? Okay. Sorry, I'll stop.

Jeff: I'm Jeff. I'm Jeanette's husband. We met on a social networking site, quite by fluke, in early 2005, and had a fast, but very healthy romance that led to getting engaged in four months, and married within ten.

Jeanette: We have been married, and very happily, for almost four years, and as if that's not enough, Jeff works at home, and I'm a housewife, which furthermore means that we're around each other almost twenty-four/seven. Does this make us relationship experts? Maybe not, but we're pretty intuitive about how to get along, and being that we're also both 35, I think we have a bit of wisdom to lean on, from those past mistakes most people seem to make in their twenties.

Jeff: So on to our inaugural topic, a question provided by someone, somewhere.

Jeanette: "I've never had a girlfriend for longer than six months. Am I ready for marriage?"

Jeff: And the answer is?

Jeanette: You want me to go first? Okay. I guess that depends on why you haven't had a girlfriend for longer than six months. If you're just pushing people away for some reason because you get bored with them, or you have some complex that you're transferring onto the people you're dating, then that's an issue. But you (Jeff) hadn't really had a girlfriend for twelve years prior to meeting me, so if you had dated people all along, maybe you would have decided after a certain amount of time that they weren't the right ones for you. Eventually, though, someone sticks. The trick is waiting for a relationship that sticks. Once you meet the right person, you'll surpass six months, as long as you haven't shaken them off for the wrong reason. Such as, in the famous Mike Myers cult comedy, "So I Married an Axe Murderer," he breaks up with a girlfriend because she smells like Campbell's Beef & Vegetable soup. If those are the kinds of reasons you dump someone you probably have some issues.

Jeff: There is nothing magical that happens at six months. It's sort of an arbitrary time frame. The duration really has not a whole lot to do with the quality of the relationship.

Jeanette: We got engaged in four months.

Jeff: Maybe you never dated anyone for more than six months, because none of those people were a good fit for you. But then you meet someone in whom you see qualities that you haven't seen in previous relationships. Right off the bat, you see in them the things that make you click much more readily. If you feel like this person is really "the one" then the six-month thing is not a make-or-break type of thing. So going back to what you said...

Jeanette: About Beef & Vegetable soup?

Jeff: Ha ha... no, but that at some point you'll hit that six months anyway, so don't sweat it. I would say, too, that if you are dating somebody and you are watching the clock, and wondering if you'll make it to six months...

Jeanette: Then you probably won't...

Jeff: Right, because that would be irrelevant. That's not what you should be focusing on.

Jeanette: Plus, if you're really having a great relationship, you'll often just lose track of time, and not be looking at how long you've been together. If anything, that often feels like "Wow, I can't believe we've only known each other for two weeks." Which brings me to another great comedy classic, which is "The Jerk" with Steve Martin, where he says "I know we've only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days." The main issue I think is not how long you've been with the person you really like, but that you're not dragging someone around that you are definitely not interested in. It's not going to get better over time, if you're just hoping to hit some time frame that seems like you've gotten better at commitment, when you don't really think you want to commit to that person. If you don't enjoy every minute of the time you spend with someone... well, I guess nobody enjoys every minute...

Jeff: If you don't enjoy 86% of the time you spend together...

Jeanette: EIGHTY-SIX PERCENT! Yes, that's a good figure. That's a much better figure than six months. We should be dealing with percentages here, and not time-lines. At least 86% of the time you spend with the significant other should be enjoyable.

Jeff: But one of the things that time is good for, is allowing you to see the representative samples of what things might drive you crazy about someone before you commit to them.

Jeanette: I have heard someone say that you should spend four seasons with someone to see if they're a good match.

Jeff: That includes football season.

Jeanette: Yes, that does include football season. Then again, we didn't give ourselves four complete seasons, because we were married and owned a house within ten months of our first e-mail. So there really is no hard and fast rule. Don't drag people around that you're unsure about. It's better to let things develop if they are going to develop. I think that's why we worked out so well, because we had a good sense about it.

Jeff & Jeanette are professional writers living in the Seattle area. They are not professional therapists, but hope to help with your relationship dilemmas anyway. Send your questions to jeffandjeanette@aol.com.