He Says/She Says: So You’ve Been on a Couple of Dates…Now What?

Get expert help with figuring out when to become exclusive. Click here to chat online to someone right now. But how many dates does it take before you and this new person in your life form an exclusive relationship? The lines between these early stages of a relationship are often blurred. Those early interactions allow you to get a feel for them and to decide whether there is any point in continuing things further.

By date two or three, you should have a pretty good idea if you like this person enough and if they are a good match on paper.

5. The Friendly Follow-Up Right After You Say Good-bye. A good How many times have you gone on a few dates only to have it fizzle out?

When you start dating someone new, there is always the looming question of when you’ll sleep together for the first time. In popular theory, that moment is the third date. The three-date rule, as firmly practiced by Charlotte York, stated that the third date was the appropriate time to have sex with a guy. But according to this survey , the old three-date rule is out, and now, women are waiting five dates before having sex .

Evidently, they are also waiting for 12 text conversations, two gifts, and three movie nights. Um, OK I guess? Five dates seems like an OK amount of time to spend getting to know each other. But so does three dates. So does 20 dates. So does three years of dating and a six-month engagement, if that’s your thing.