What's The Longest Period Of Time You've Ever Dated?

So, girls and boys.... tell me, do!

What's the longest period of time you've ever just "dated"?

Meaning, dating multiple people and not just committed to one person in a more-or-less monogamous boyfriend/girlfriend, you're-my-only-one relationship?

I was looking around for other dating blogs, and I ran across one on Cosmopolitan for a "Joe Hottie" dating blog... some guy writing about his dating adventures.  Unfortunately, by the time I got there, Joe had already stopped blogging because after four months of blogging and two months dating a specific girl, he initiated "the talk" and committed to being a boyfriend, and stopped blogging.

According to the editor, this is the third Joe Hottie that they had in this type of blogging scenario and all three of them bailed within the same time frame, unwilling to continue blogging after being in a relationship.  Ah well.  What he already wrote is timeless, and entertaining for years after it's posted.

But reading the lament of the editor in that blog as she closed it off a year ago made me wonder how long I will be doing this "dating blog" myself, and how challenging it might be to keep a blog roll of other active dating and relationship blogs as people feel the need to stop blogging to respect the privacy of their new blossoming relationships.

I think I'm going to go into My Workshop today, and bring with me the thought of continuing to blog about important blossoming relationship things after finding someone worthy of being my 3.5 man.  Already it's inspiring a lot of emotional contrast, because it requires a degree of openness that I've never had to share, and society has always discouraged through the encouragement of personal diaries and the sanctity of them.

I think it would be amazing despite the initial discomfort, however.  Already I can see how conversations that failed to happen in previous relationships (but really NEEDED to have happened) would automatically happen, and frankly, it would be one of the things that would help vibrate the wrong man out of my life if he can't handle that I have my own thoughts that might not be "correct".

There's definitely some things that scare me, however - blogging has quite often been about sorting out my thoughts before I have any conversations with anyone else about the issues.  Most times, my own sorting out process means I don't really have to have the same conversations as before I took the time to sort out my thoughts - I figure out what's confusing me and suddenly my concerns don't make sense anymore, so I progress on happily.  But in the mean time, others read my confusion and pick it up as their own, and lash out at me as a way to help themselves feel better...

Hmm, maybe it isn't that scary.  I know what's mine and what's yours, and this just reinforces it :)