Time moves at warp speed.  You meet at a bar. You chat for 20 minutes. You both feel some chemistry, so you offer to buy her a second drink. This serves two purposes: it shows your interest and establishes you as the bank account of the relationship. You proceed to chat for a few hours, than kiss goodnight before parting ways. The kiss was good. Congratulations! You are now in an official relationship.

There must be constant communication. A text message is required within 20 minutes of your departure. While there are no rules on who should send the first message, it has to happen or you can consider the relationship over. The message should be something about the kiss. Once the first message comes in, you must text/e-mail all day long, every day, with the obligatory “good night” phone call occurring before bed. After two days of constant contact you will probably progress to the “good morning” phone call, which usually occurs many hours before your usual wake up time. By Day Four you know each other’s every move.

It’s day-ting, not dating. It is now time for date #2 (assuming you haven’t already seen each other every day which may have been hindered do to a logistics issue). Your second date will be elaborate and well planned.  It will involve some sort of long day trip followed by drinks, then dinner, then more drinks. After spending a minimum of 12 hours together that day/night you declare your love for each other and have the sex. You are now officially in an exclusive relationship.  (Remember, you met for drinks on Monday and it is now Friday).

A pet adoption must occur. You are both now hopelessly in love. You start planning your wedding and future kid’s names while sitting in a bubble bath together. After hours spent on petfinder.com you visit the local animal shelter and adopt a dog together as a symbol of your undying love and long, beautiful future. You pay no attention to the fact that neither lease allows dogs and the fact that you paid the adoption fee.

One of you must retreat. It is now Monday again, 1 week after meeting. You do not get your good morning phone call. You look at your phone. No text—something is up. You may feel a slight panic. You roll out of bed up, step in puppy poop, curse, then check your e-mail. There you find a note from her announcing that she feels that you are moving too fast and she needs space. You do not hear from her for four days. You will spend those four days analyzing every detail of your week-long relationship with pretty much anyone who will listen.

You must pretend that her momentary freakout never happened. On Friday she calls and acts as if nothing happened. She inquires about the progress of puppy training and in the next breath convinces you that you need to celebrate your two-week anniversary by buying fun new sex toys. You oblige because although you are highly confused about what the hell is going on, your heart hurts without her.

You must spend money like a drunken sailor. After spending far too much money on a make-up dinner, wine, and new sex toys, you bring them home and the nutter pup thinks they are his new chew toys, promptly destroying $200 worth of gear.

Lies of omission don’t count. You are secretly happy because now you can just use your old favorite toy without the future wife thinking that you did not make the effort to go shopping with her and pick out something “special.” You decide it is best to never tell her that you put peanut butter on the new purchases to achieve the desired outcome of chew toy. Yes, eight days in and you are already lying to her.

Sadly, U-Hauling is an all-too-real stereotype. And it will happen.  After the sex you review each other’s leases to see which one will be easiest to break when you move in together next weekend. You completely overlook the fact that she has no idea what pro-rated means. While she starts to research the best prices for moving vans you inquire if she has a brother who can help with the heavy stuff. You discover she is estranged from her family. Funny, that has never come up before. You pay no attention to this new development as you are in blind love and she is, in fact, your soulmate.

Be prepared to be the breadwinner. She books the truck for Thursday and is puzzled when you tell her that you cannot take off from work. She promptly asks you for your credit card to book the van. Again, you pay no attention to this because she is the most intriguing woman you have ever met and you are never, ever going to meet someone more perfect for you, no matter what your friends say! You are the luckiest girl in the world.

– Rachel Green

Photo by Oneras (Creative Commons)