Published: 2026-01-04
Last Updated: 2026-01-04
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Romantic relationships can vary between different people. Some like to spend lots of time together and others like to make relationship appointments throughout the month or year. The relationship type will vary based on personality, time schedule, preferred activities, and interests groups.
While many people are seeking long term relationships, the concept of short term relationships has emerged. This allows a romantic relationship with someone that is short term with the stipulation that either partner may leave with short notice. There may be some things like shared bills or visits with friends and family that can not be terminated abruptly.
These fill in relationships are nice because it allows people to explore how they would respond to the company of another human instead of visualizing in their head what a perfect relationship would look like without the response of another person.
While some of these relationships may result in a long term agreement, a lot of them do end within 2-3 years. This can result in 3-5 partners over 10 years and for some people this may become their normal relationship pattern. Over a 20-30 year period, this would result in 10 to 15 partners.
Keeping in Contact
Not everyone keeps in contact with ex boyfriends or girlfriends for the entirety of their life. People may have a time period of up to 2 years when it is appropriate to make contact to request help, assistance, or companionship. People are unlikely to restart a relationship with someone they broke up with. Sulking and working through frustrations is more recommended than breaking up and asking to start over. For a lot of people, when a relationship is over the only option is friendship and many new boyfriends or girlfriends will not feel comfortable when communicating or spending time with an ex.
This varies by dating group but workplace conduct is a concern in an evaluation. Most people don't live far from work unless they work from home or are virtual. They also tend to spend time near work during time off even if the businesses are closed. There is an evaluation of leaving and going back to the same employer or losing contact with and reestablishing friendships. This becomes less feasible as people meet more people and have access to larger areas but it does happen and should be approached with maturity.
Spending Time Together
Exploring new activities can be interesting but participating in shared interests often yields better results. Most couples will have a mixture of things they share and things that are completely different. This is governed in a relationship with agreements, communications, and understandings. Time together on weekends may occasionally resemble a meeting to talk about treatment, fairness, understanding, and expectations. Sometimes the expectations can not be met, there is no agreement. Some expectations may require consideration before an agreement is made. While a relationship like this may seem highly legalistic to some, it results in better interactions with each other. There are little or no assumptions and there is room for questions. Abuse can be easily detected. If someone displays a specific behavior everytime the other person explains they dislike something or are uncomfortable with a certain situation, that can indicate abuse. Without keeping score, a feeling of a lot of abuse can result in a conversation about terminating the relationship. This is often done with a conversation of likes, dislikes, successes, failures, and future agreements such as contact stipulations or resolution on liabilities such as shared bills.
With this contractual type of relationship agreement out of the way, communications become easier. Would you like to do something together? What is bothering you? How can I make you feel better? Did I do something wrong? How can I fix it? Should we spend time to ourselves for a few days? Has our intimacy agreements changed?
People will often spend time together by making a list or itinerary. This will vary on shared activities, preferred activities of one partner, and something completely new that neither has tried. Eventually, the relationship will fall into an algorithm and it will work out, or leave something to be desired.
Working Together
HR policies often prohibit or make it extremely difficult to date someone at work or even in a nearby business. However, legally a consensual adult relationship can not be prevented by an employer. The relationship may need to be disclosed to the HR department. They may be restricted from documenting such a relationship due to bedroom privacy rights and might be looking for favoritism or bias in the workplace instead. Most often, if a worker is following conduct and ethics requirements outside of the relationship status, they are not in violation of any workplace policies. This means workers who are in a relationship are restricted from holding hands, kissing, or grabbing each other at work in order to maintain their bedroom privacy rights. Some employers will allow minimal hand holding or kissing between family members at work but are asked to not offend the other workers.
Conduct, ethics, and the comfort level of other workers should be the guiding principle in determining whether a workplace relationship is appropriate.
Living Near Each Other
Eventually couples move in with each other in a lot of relationship contexts. For some, this can be after a month or two of dating and for others it is not a consideration for a relationship lasting less than 2 years. Living near each other is normally not within walking distance anymore and someone can be considered as living nearby within a 30 minute transportation ride to each others home. They are often allowed to visit each others home unannounced or to arrive on short notice without accusations of spying. This is best done through agreement if not already living nearby. For example, a couple dating over 1 year but less than 2 years and with a lease expiring may agree to live closer to each other for the remaining year. Possibly even in the same apartment building or within walking distance of each others home.
This will vary by relationship and is normally talked about first. Some people prefer the person they are in a relationship with to live at least 1 hour away from them during the first few years of the relationship.
Multi Partner Relationships
These are more advanced and complex and have multiple agreements among multiple people. Someone that has not successfully completed a short term relationship without problems that resulted in fairly reasonable breakup is not recommended to be in a multi-partner relationship. This is because the agreements may be too fast and can conflict with others in the relationship. If a person cant think through the stipulations and possible expectations, they may not be able to keep up with the relationship pace and end up feeling abused.
Relationships with multiple partners can work out well for a lot of people, especially in crowded areas where not everyone has a compatible partner to couple with. The relationships can be with one partner that is intimate with multiple people or a group relationship where everyone in the group is intimate with anyone else in the group. While a multi-partner relationship works well for many people, they are essentially sharing a partner, a group relationship can be complex for those unfamiliar with legal agreements. There has to be a mutual consent among all participants to interact with all other participants. In both situations, there are ongoing meetings about the relationship status and its successes and failures including comfort, discomfort, and potential abuse.
When these relationship requirements and expectations are understood both multi-partner relationships and group relationships follow the same format as other relationships. There are ongoing communications about shared activities, time together, work requirements, expectations, disappointments, and suggestions for improving the relationship. This can result in long term relationships that are satisfying and healthy or short term relationships that meet health requirements and have a very low level of emotional injury.
Multi-partner relationships are more advanced and have additional considerations besides time together and intimacy.
Religion
People of different religions are often in healthy and successful relationships that are achieved by keeping their religion mostly to themselves and treating it as dissimilar interest. They will often visit each others religious buildings but may not convert or make a commitment to any of their religious requirements. This can result in a partner getting kicked out of their religious institution. Often, they may be able to find a different institution that is more lenient or liberal with dating someone of a different religion and may have different requirements that make the relationship more compatible and that both partners can agree on. Many religions only accept couples as a stipulation of membership or association.
Dating only people of a certain religion is an acceptable behavior in relationships. This is best accomplished through the religious institution that someone belongs to. Finding someone in a dating area of the same religion is statistically rare even if the religions are similar. There is no way around the fact that even within the same religion, people have different attitudes about their religion. Religious membership is often hereditary meaning the parents introduce a dependent minor to their religion. Their views on their parents religion may change throughout their life or it may remain fairly similar to their parents. If this is important to someone in a relationship, it should be one of their 5 quick questions.