I'm talking about something specific — the window between "we met" and "we both know what this is." And my completely personal, entirely based on my own chaotic dating history opinion is: that window should not stretch past a month.

Here's why.

Тhat specific zone where you're seeing someone regularly, something is clearly happening, neither of you has said anything, and you're both performing casual while privately completely not casual. I was in that zone with the same man for four months once. Four months of ambiguous dinners and ambiguous texts and me lying to my friends saying "we're just seeing where it goes" while clearly having opinions about where it went.

It ended in nothing. Of course it ended in nothing. Ambiguity is not a foundation. It's a waiting room.

What I've noticed is that a month is actually enough time to know. Not to know everything. Not to know if they're your person forever. But to know whether you want to keep going. Whether you like who you are around them. Whether there is enough there to say — out loud, using words — "I want this to be something."

If a month in you still can't have that conversation, it's not because the time isn't right. It's because one or both of you already has an answer and is avoiding saying it.

I'd rather know. Even if the answer is no — especially if the answer is no — I would so much rather know in month one than discover in month six that I spent all that time in a waiting room for a train that was never coming.

My time is the most expensive thing I have. I stopped treating it like it was free.