The OTHER Third Date Rule

I would never tell my parents this, but a lot of my uncompromising rules about relationships are things I learned from watching her.

I saw my parents have screaming matches that stemmed from tiny misunderstandings or buried feelings, and swore that I would always be honest with my partner.

I saw the aftermath, where they tried to patch over the hurt with half-hearted 'I love you's and physical intimacy, like slapping duct tape over a leak, and wished that I could tell them that I wouldn't mind divorced parents, if it meant they were happy. I promised myself that I would never stay in a failed relationship for the sake of being together.

When my parents split up for good, they sat us down, my sisters and I, and told us the truth. Neither had cheated, but Dad had fallen out of love with Mum and in love with someone else. He refused to lie or have an affair, so they were splitting up. He told us that the blame was on him, not Mum.

I respected him more for his honesty and integrity. I'd known that my parent's marriage had been on the rocks for a long time. They'd tried to stick it out, but it hadn't worked, and everyone had been tense and miserable.

I never told either of my parents that I wasn't sad that they were splitting up; I was happy because now they could be happy. I think Mum knew anyway. I vaguely referenced it when I reassured my dad that just because my younger sister was pretending that he didn't exist, I still loved him.

The therapist my parents sent me to didn't believe me, either, no matter how many times I repeated that I didn't have an issue with either of my parent's new partners. Apparently, 15-year-old Undiagnosed teen girls aren't meant to be so rational about life-altering events. I attended the appointments because it got me out of school, then refused to even think about attending therapy for the next decade, convinced that all psych practitioners were the same as the one I was sent to.

I never reacted well to being told that I don't know my own mind, and that fiasco was a big part of why.

Watching my parents' failed relationship, and the healthier relationships they formed with other people afterward, taught me a few things:

1. You are not defined by your relationship status
2. Relationships are fluid; what you have now may not be what you have in the future
3. Honesty and communication are the most important things in any relationship, be it romantic, platonic or familial
4. Your relationship should never be maintained at the expense of your mental, emotional or physical well-being.
5. Loving someone should never feel like being in a job you only stick with for the paycheque.

The phrasing is very generalised, I know, but it's good and valid advice for a lot of life situations.

It was probably a good thing that I learned these things around the age that most girls are just starting to date. It gave me pre-existing standards for any relationship that I entered, and while having standards comes with it's own problems when people are offended by you setting boundaries, it was better for me in the long run.

In High School, one of my friends was a chronic dater.

I didn't realise it at the time - and wouldn't for many years - but she equated her self-worth with being desirable to the opposite sex. She never went more than a day or so between boyfriends, and her relationships got physical in a hurry. I never judged her for it, and I still believe that it is up to the individual to set the pace for their relationship, but I knew that her relationship style was not for me.

I went on a few dates in my teens and twenties, with boys and men that I was either already friends with, or with whom I could envision a friendship forming. I wanted love, but I'd always been a firm believer in the notion that the best way to form a lasting connection was to start as friends, and hopefully remain that way even if it didn't work out.

My Dad was a big part of that belief: if he could be friends with women without cheating, and neither Mum or my Step-mother had a problem with it, then clearly it was possible for men and women to be friends without it being romantic.

Seriously, how did it take until my late twenties to work out that I wasn't Straight?

This was only re-inforced by the fact that I have several male friends, only one of whom was a romantic prospect for all of three days - he asked me out at a medieval faire we both attended, met his future wife on the same day, and promptly forgot I existed. Their kids have grown up with me as Auntie Tash, and we work far better as pesudo-siblings than we ever would have as a potential couple - and I've never been tempted to cheat. Nor, to my knowledge, have they.

Eventually, I formed the Third Date Rule.

In popular media and culture, the Third Date Rule, or 3 Dates Rule, is a somewhat misogynistic guideline that girls and women should refrain from sexual intimacy until at least the third date, for bear of being seen as 'easy' or 'loose'. Obviously, this did not hold true for boys and men, but was vital to avoid being described as a number of extremely gendered and derogatory terms.

My Third Date Rule was a little different: If we have run out of things to talk about by the third date, there won't be a fourth date.

I saw the cool, lonely silences between my parents as they struggled to talk to each other, to find something to say that wouldn't spark a fight. I saw how lonely my Dad seemed, unable to vent to my parent's mutual friends. I wanted better for myself.

When my own relationship got to the point where I found myself hesitating to venture an opinion because my now-ex would find something wrong with it, no matter what I said, I knew that it was time to break up.

I'm more than a bit socially awkward, though once I'm comfortable and have a topic of common interest to talk about, I can prattle on for days. Often, first dates could result in long stretches of awkward silence if my date and I didn't know each other well already.

Going back to the things I learned from my mother's relationships, I refused to try to stretch out the inevitable via physical intimacy. Sex alone doesn't fix problems.

To clarify, women can and do have sex drives. Women can have Friends-With-Benefits, can have sex on the first date, can have f***-buddies (censored because Vocal is a public forum). Women can be or hire escorts and sex-workers, and should be shamed for none of it.

But, again harking back to lessons learned from the period between my Mum seperating from Dad and meeting the man she's been in a de-facto relationship with for almost 20 years, and the fact that my Dad and Step-Mother actually waited several months before starting a relationship after my parents separated, a romantic relationship should never be built solely on physical intimacy.

You need enough in common that you can do things together outside of the bedroom.

If you don't respect, trust and value your partner, then you don't love them.

You need your own interests so that your life doesn't revolve around a single person to the exclusion of all others.

You need to be as happy cuddling on a couch binging Netflix as you are in the throes of passion. (Or happier, in the case of Demi-, Ace or low-sex-drive relationships)

You need to make a commitment to each other, and both of you need to put in the work to maintain it.

If you put in the commitment, and the work, and the relationship still fails, that's ok, but it's important to own the truth rather than lying to yourself about it.

I never told my parents that I learned more about relationships from their mistakes than from their triumphs, and I proably never will.

If they ever finds out, I hope they're happy that I avoided repeating those errors.

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This piece was written for the Mother's Day Challenge; you can read my other entries below: