Dating with the Intent to Marry

[Tinajo]

And one of the things I realized is that if I’m dating someone, if I can’t see marrying them, then I need to break it off. Which is not a problem with the on again, off again guy. We “broke up” again a few months ago, and are back to just being friends.

So, the basic question, I guess, is this: Is it nuts to date someone for a while, get to know them enough to understand that you cannot see marrying them and having a family and breaking it off for that reason?

As many others have said, this is the perfect reason to break it off - in fact, in a way it’s the only reason to break up with someone - any other reasons to break it off which your friends might consider ‘normal’ are also expressions of that: if he cheated on you, was always putting you down - would you want a husband like that? No - so you break it off! Sounds to me like you’ve got completely the right idea.

Actually, I once heard it said that if we view a relationship or a courtship as discerning marriage, then a couple breaking up is just as successful an end to a courtship as marriage - they’ve discerned it’s not for them.

So I don’t really have a set of values for what to do with a guy that I’m not dating. And you’re correct, there was never any sex involved. I’ve managed not to trip into that hole so far.

So, what can you do with a guy who is a friend, but not of the dating kind, and not have people assume that you’re really dating? The only thing I can think of is to just not have male friends. Saves on the confusion. But then, if you can’t have any guys as friends, how do you find a boyfriend?

Speaking as someone who has always had good male friends, you can do exactly as you said above - anything you would normally do with a female friend. I’ve often had close male friends that I would spend time with one-on-one talking about really important things, and yes sometimes people would ask me whether we were together - but I never saw that as a problem and just explained that we weren’t in fact boyfriend and girlfriend but good friends If they kept trying to make innuendos then I learned to ignore it because I realised that’s their own problem not mine.

Hope that helps