One of the things that Lia (my girlfriend) and I talked about very early on in our relationship was communication. Obviously a huge chunk of relationships and relationship problems boil down to a lack of communication, so we wanted to mitigate that as much as possible. But we also want to set another expectation around communication — not too much.
In general, as it comes to relationships, I think there’s much more that can and should be communicated that most people do. Being honest with each other about situations that come up and where there are differing points of view. Making sure you’re on the same page early on is crucial for the success of the relationship.
However, the area Lia and I wanted to be mindful of was talking about the future. We are both planners, she even more so than me, so we wanted to make sure that we talked about what we needed to talk about and doing it when we needed to do it.
That means that some discussions about the relationship needed to wait. As the relationship progressed, more topics would open up for us to be able to talk about but we thought it wise to wait until they needed to come up to discuss.
We never set hard rules for when these times would come, and I’m sure because of that, we may have crossed some of these before we should have, but in general, just setting that expectation at the beginning of the relationship has been immensely helpful. When one of us starts thinking or talking about something that we’re not sure of, we’ll often ask the question, “Hey, we may not want to talk about this yet, and that’s totally fine, but what about {insert thing}”
And then it gives the other person the freedom to decide whether it’s a good time to discuss yet. There are still some things that Lia and I haven’t talked about, and that’s because we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. Some of these we likely won’t talk about unless we get engaged, and others even until marriage.
But that’s kind of the whole point. Protecting yourself from giving too much of yourself away before you’re committed to the person.
As I said at the beginning, communication is so, so important, but I also think timely communication is even more important. Make sure you communicate what you need to when you need to. Not before, not after.