I’ll try again. My point was that a relationship can be downgraded without the other party realizing it… the other person has decided that they dont see it going long term, etc.. but stay in it while shopping around. It happened to me.

Men aren’t scientific scholars, there’s almost always a warning, some sore of sign that a guy is loosing interest. Most women don’t know what those signs are or just ignore the signs.

Most dudes aren’t even good at hiding when they are out playing the field. it’s not the DaVinci Code. Its pretty obvious in a way.

I think the one poster is right about giving it a few months to see how someone acts. I think if people were genuine but thought about the other person, maybe more relationships would last longer. There’s no easy formula for sure.

Oh she’d love to have a man to help her raise this child (if she manages to have one), but she’s prepared to do it on her own, too. And she knew I wasn’t interested in anything serious with her because of this baby. I raised my kids; I’m not interested in raising new ones. My last serious relationship taught me that — that ex girl-friend had a five year old. Nice kid, but I realized how stifling it is to have a small child around. I’m at a time in my life where I want to be able to be spontaneous and go out see a movie or have dinner without planning for it days in advance.

It’s a bit tough on you women with small children. It’s not that it keeps us men from being interested, but it makes us commitment-phobic.

You know what’s hard about dating in our middle-ages? We know so much more, and we spot those red flags so much easier. I really think we end up passing on some relationships that could be good because we are so wary.

On the other hand, the dating pool for our age group is full of misfits and rejects and people who don’t know how to sustain a successful relationship. So we need to be able to flag those people as well.

I myself can “switch from being really into a man and thinking he could be the one, but then things can change for whatever reason” and I downgrade the relationship (ie dump him. Gently, but yeah, I dump him).

It takes a while to know someone. You may need to date a man for a few months before you find out he’s an alcoholic or likes to put down people when you’re not around. People are always on their best behavior for the first 4 months at least! But often you see a clearer picture later. Nothin’ wrong with saying “bye” if he no longer floats your boat, I say.

Which is another reason for people backing off on the “marking”. Why try to act like essentially you’re all married when it’s only been a few weeks/months? What’s wrong with having a great relationship and letting it grow (or not) naturally? Why force something that may not be meant to exist?

Yep, oftentimes without warning or apparent reason. Precisely the reason why I swore off online dating a long time ago. It was prevalent when I met men from online.

I think women need to keep this stuff in mind a lot more than they do. I know a guy can switch from being really in to a woman and thinking she could be the one, but then things can change for whatever reason, and his feelings might head towards downgrading the relationship and even shopping around and she may not even realize it!

The social sites are interesting. Recently, I had dinner with a woman and she made it clear to me that she was only interested in friendship, and not just with me, but with any possible man. She’s trying to have a baby on her own. So I got her to add me as a FB friend a few days later, and I see a message from her on her wall about looking forward to going camping with a “special somebody.” I have no idea what that means, but it did make me wonder if she was honest with me.

I wasn’t offended, just a bit bemused. She and I still plan to hang out together now and then. I’m not in the baby business anymore, so I wish her luck with that, and in the meantime, she’s fun to talk to.

One of the things I think men may do a bit more often than women is wait until they’ve found someone new before they end an exclusive relationship. I think women tend to think about relationships more and will end them when they are no longer happy, but men often like to have someone new lined up. Unless a relationship absolutely blows up, most men are not going to abandon a sex partner until they think they have a new woman corralled. Maybe DG’s guy was in that mode, restless and looking.

Now if they were dating/causal still then it would be another story, and she would be wrong. But she is totally in the clear for posting the “Skanks back off, he’s mine” message.

Sorry fellas I tend to tell it like it is.
Fellas be easy and don’t worry. Women still won’t want to really understand what I’ve just said so there’s no Man Law violation here!

And after 4 months of dating and his friends don’t know you…
either your not his woman or you’re dating the Unibomber!!!

That is that in both of your minds that exclusive dating relates to being serious about the person.
Some folks only date exclusive even when it isn’t serious yet.

If he never posts anything private on his page then cool, he’s just really private but if he posts about everything else private but just not you then something is wrong.

1st is:
You knew in the back of your mind how guys and gals are on social sites, so you did what you did. So let’s be real it was the main reason for your post on his page….right?

The 2nd issue:
If he made a big thing about this then there’s a problem.
If it was just an afterthought kinda chuckle then cool don’t sweat it.
Being marked is not a problem for any man that is exclusive.

The “marking” DG referred to is putting a note on someone’s FB or Myspace page that anyone with access to those pages can see that indicates you are in a relationship with the owner of the page. So a “Thanks for the great date last night!” comment left on someone’s page will be seen by everyone who can visit that page.

I do think comments like that are better left private. I wouldn’t get up in front of a roomful of people and wait until I had their attention to say that I was in a relationship with a woman. Posting a similar comment like that on a FB or Myspace page is doing something like that. What DG posted seemed innocent enough, but I’d err on the side of caution when it comes to publicly parading what is essentially a private sentiment.

But, I will take it that the guy in question was into Facebook and was OK with the concept otherwise. After months of dating, I’d think they were exclusive as well. This bit of info is telling of his true feelings though. I think it would almost be the beginning of the end from the tone of this. I think this is another instance where the guy might be leading the woman on. Perhaps I don’t understand all the underpinnings of Facebook, but if he wants to call all the shots, perhaps it’s good to know this now rather than later. Perhaps he is more about control than anything else. If he got in a snit over something like this, imagine his anger at something that might be a bigger issue down the road.

Facebook lets you mark your status. I’d say that if a person you are dating still has his or her status as “single” that’s a good reason to not “mark” that person.

True story: My son was in a multi-year relationship with a young woman, but when they broke up the news got out long before he had a chance to even say anything. She updated her FB page, my daughter was a FB friend of hers, so she saw the news there, immediately called my ex and told her, and before he knew, my son was getting a call from his mother asking him about it.

Marking doesn’t help the relationship to keep growing and developing–it just adds a barrier to dissolving the relationship. But early on, if the relationship needs to fall apart because of compatibility or whatever, I would prefer it to do so! Nobody’s well served when people who are unsuited to each other are forced by external expectations (ie public embarrassment) to keep trying to make it work.

I feel that anyone I would date should be able to resist temptation–I don’t feel I would need to warn off other women. And if I did feel this way, then that would mean that the man is not worth my time.

It was bad enough having everyone in my world know all about my ex’s infidelities and our messy divorce. Why would I invite everyone in my entire world and workplace to vicariously watch me date?

I dated a man a few years ago, for about a year in total. He commuted between 2 states for his job, so we only saw each other every 2 wks or so. So the relationship was slow to grow and, I felt, didn’t ever achieve a high degree of intimacy. In fact, even after a year he’d never met any of my family except my kids, I’d never visited him in his “other” state’s home, and we’d never taken a vacation together except when he had to go somewhere for work (he was kind of a workaholic). It didn’t seem to be going anywhere & I was frustrated (why have a BF you never see?), so I broke it off.

However, when we had only been dating a few months I found out that he had put a HUGE photo of me prominently displayed on his desk at work! He also had photos of us together on his computer at work as the screensaver (and he his computer screen was wall-mounted in his office & as big as a large-screen TV) . If his office was just a private cubicle it maybe would have been kind of sweet, but this guy had a prominent public job and was often in the media–his office was where he met the public and he’d be filmed for TV etc.

In addition, I found out that he was prominently referring to me to his colleagues as his “partner”—as if we were a long-term committed “like-married” couple! Weird.

I really disliked this marking–it seemed fake and for show. I felt like he wanted people to think he was in a long-term committed couple relationship with me when he wasn’t (yet, or ever as it turned out). I also felt like he put up my picture as a way to show off to the public–like he was such a stud to be dating a younger, attractive woman or something. Even we’d been together for years and were living together or married etc, it would have been weird for him to be showing it off so much at his work.

I didn’t want him to be dating me primarily for the public props he hoped he’d get—I wanted our relationship to be centered around our private life instead, with the public version not as important.