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!

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 :)