Relationships, Parents, First Vacations, and More

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Here's a fun question for today: in your current relationship, who was the first to “define” the relationship? How did you decide it was time to meet the parents (and how did that go)? How did you decide on your first vacation together? (A bigger question, I suppose – do you feel like yours and your partner's roles in those early decisions was indicative of the roles you would play in your more established relationship?)

This was a throwaway mention in a NYT article on mankeeping (gift link should you care to read it!) but I thought it might make a fun topic here…

For my $.02, as someone who's been married for 15+ years…

I don't remember who was the first to “define” the relationship, but my husband made it very clear early on that he was Serious about me. (He had just turned 27 and I was about to turn 31 when we met, so I had probably been asking questions to make sure I wasn't wasting my time with him given that I knew I wanted kids.)

Our first vacation together was a trip to Paris about six months after we met — he bought the plane tickets and I paid for the hotels. I remember it being a joint decision, but it was my first vacation with a partner — and accordingly I told him he should meet my parents back in Ohio. So he came with me that Easter, a month or two after we'd gone to Paris. (It was also a big deal for him to meet my brother, but he lived near us in NYC and we had a lot of the same friends, so they met at a friend's birthday party about 2-3 months after we'd started dating.)

(Sadly I do not remember when I met his parents — my husband had a few friends from his Brooklyn high school days who would throw relaxed parties, often including local parents, so I'm guessing it was at one of those…)

Did these early decisions set the course for how we would be together later on? I think yes — all of these decisions were very easy for us, and our entire relationship has been easy *knocks on wood/head*… we share decisions and planning.

Readers, what are your thoughts — how were those early, large decisions in your relationship?

Stock photo via Stencil.