What's The Difference Between 2.25 Man and 3.5 Man?

As I think about my own Mantris, and how to decide when a man moves from Quarter to Half to Whole to more, there's a lot that I can turn to The Four Man Plan book for, on its own, and that's great.

I'm finding that I'm struggling a bit with the 2.25 Man vs the 3.5 Man internally, even after having read the book a few times over.

So, this morning I pulled out the book again and went to the chapter about the 3.5 Man, and read what Cindy Lu's definition of the man was.

In short, without mentioning marriage or engagement or anything, there's a level of monogamous commitment on both sides of the relationship with a 3.5 Man.  A 2.25 Man, on the other hand, is a Plan Man that a 4MPer is sleeping with, yes, and monogamous with from her side, but there is no guarantee nor verbal commitment from the Plan Man's side that he, too, is being monogamous.

And of course, since according to The Four Man Plan structure, we women are not to initiate "the talk", we're also encouraged to continue keeping our Mantris filled even if we have a 2.25 man, up until the point that he initiates "the talk", or until we find that the relationship fades and another blossoms with more promise before us.

Shouldn't A 3.5 Man Commit To Engagement?

This is the thought that is going through my mind that I'm trying to reconcile in some way.

For me, it's been super easy to find a guy who wants to be in a monogamous relationship with me, but those ones that want to jump into them early on (ie: he asks to go from a Whole Man to a 3.5 Man in one fell swoop) don't tend to want to do it for healthy reasons.

This one realization makes me want to treat a 3.5 man like a marriage proposal instead of just a "commit to me, I'll commit to you, and let's see if this will work" thing.   Meaning, up until the point that we actually know that we mesh well enough to get engaged and plan our futures together both emotionally and financially, a Plan Man can get to a 2.25 status at maximum, and while I will agree to sexual fidelity, the 2.25 status is a limited time offer and either progresses to 3.5 or goes to zero.  Within what length of time?  I don't know.

Six months?  At my age, that should be enough time once we've entered into the "I won't let anyone else touch me under my clothes, just you" sexualized 2.25 phase of the game - and if a guy isn't ready to commit to more by that time, I'll need to continue with the other men on my Mantris, probably having to ramp up on getting new quarters and focusing my attention ahead and moving on, so I can squeeze him out of the Mantris completely.

At any rate, I guess I have to think about how to communicate this expectation - but not yet, since I'm not at that point, thankfully!