The 6 Month Relationship Mark

Some people wonder if there are particular milestones you go through during a relationship, and I think some of it has a valid basis. Do you deal with a difference between a day into the relationship as opposed to a month? Of course. 3 months? Maybe. But what a lot of people have been asking about is that ominous and oh-so-strange 6 month mark in a relationship. Is there a difference of what happens 6 months into the relationship? In my experience, the answer is yes, there most certainly is! And I’ll just say it: most of the time 6 months in is where you are going to encounter some of your biggest fundamental problems within the relationship.

Once you reach the 6 month mark, there becomes new questions. Questions like, “is this thing really that serious?” The issue of commitment comes into play and you face brand new challenges. 6 months in is also sometimes a period in which sex becomes more difficult to have as often because there is something of an adaptation process that takes place naturally. So how do we tackle these problems that we encounter 6 months in?

To answer that question, we must first think about something else: how do you tackle relationship problems in general? Granted, I understand that some people, usually girls, will not think that there is anything that needs to be “fixed” and that 6 months is really just the time period in which there is a breakdown in communication. One thing is true, ladies, you’re definitely right about the need for communication!

6 months into the relationship is actually quite the same as any other time in the entire romantic process, the only major difference that I can see being that you might be entering into one of the many ‘phases’ that we can commonly segregate and identity in the course of our love lives. In my own experience, I usually have not been able to date any girl for more than about 2 years exactly. The other time period that I also bizarrely seem to have stuck to is 3 months. For some, relationships lasting a very particular period of time can be concerning. But consider this.

Think for a moment about how many relationships you have likely had. Let’s say you’re a girl, and you’ve had 12 boyfriends in your life, you’re 22 years old. Most of your relationships last almost exactly 3 months long and then someone breaks up, whether it be you or the guy. Is this weird? Well, no, because consider something else: let’s say that some guy who is 100 years old slept with 289 women during his lifetime and most of them he was only with for about 2 weeks. It is a time period that, granted, is partially affected by the gender and culture factors we are all so used to reading about, but it is also simple probability: no time period is any more likely than any other time period.

With that out of the way, do not worry anymore about the time period. The time period is not really what is important. What is likely happening is that you have actually recognized a commonly recurring personality pattern in yourself. For some people, there are certain periods of time in which they will subconsciously trigger actions that will cause them to either create a questioning process of whether or not this whole thing is working out the same as it once did, or they will simply just naturally begin questioning it because it occurs to them. Whatever the reason, what matters is how you are dealing with it.

I have known a lot of couples that, for some it’s 3 months (okay, heck, for some it’s ONE NIGHT), for other’s it’s 4, 5, 6, 7, maybe even 8 months in – the amount of intimacy they share with their partner dramatically increases. The intimacy is normal. If someone will stay for 6 months, they’ll probably stay for a year, and if they’ll stay for a year, then who knows? This is actually a biologically based process, driven by human evolutionary history. It can take a long time to build the comfort level between two people up enough to the point where they would even consider a long term commitment, but the longer someone sticks around the easier it becomes.

Your ability to get past 6 months also lies in your ability to get past any general relationship issue, and that’s really all there is to it! Consider that a successful relationship essentially operates off of these basic principles:

Honesty & openness – You have to be able to share feelings with each other, no matter what they are. There is no such thing as “well, what they don’t know won’t hurt them.” That’s not the issue – eventually the truth comes to pass and somebody gets hurt. Maybe it is not them, maybe it’s you instead. The bottom line is that lying simply is not necessary and it is never beneficial. Being in love and having the responsibility of love means that you must become emotionally mature enough to handle the honest truth of both your own feelings and your partner’s.

Always be learning. – You can never stop learning. If the sex life gets boring, experiment with it and try new things you may not have thought of before. It everything is boring, maybe you are actually depressed yourself. Problems you have in a relationship can often be reflections of your own problems. If you are tired of doing the same things with your partner over and over again during the course of the relationship, it is probably time to change those things up. Start doing things in conversation that you know they may not expect and test their reactions (not bad things, silly, try out new jokes!).

Eliminate distance & moderate time – Even the most successful couples have a few things in common. They are not around each other so much to the point where it causes suffocation, but they do spend a certain amount of time together. They are not so concerned with keeping one another close at all times, but they should be aware of the detrimental effects of distance over a long period of time. Long distance relationships are not a bad thing, but it is important to understand that distance can very easily be a factor in relationship destruction – stay close but don’t kill each other from spending every waking second you’re alive with one another!

Also see (each opens a new window):

• Tips to Maintaining a Long Term Relationship
• Face Friendship, No Matter the Supposed Cost
• Entering Healthy Romantic Relationships