Totally Ambiguous

I remember a simpler time in my life, also known as seventh grade, when a boy held my hand and that meant we were going out. He was my first boyfriend and "going out" just consisted of more holding hands, getting pizza together, and my first kiss. Oh, those days were lovely.

According to my mother, the days when she was young and single were a lot like my seventh grade experience, when people were either single or in a relationship. There wasn't much of a grey area in between, and this is why she has some trouble understanding my dating lexicon.

Whenever my mom asks me if I'm dating someone, I usually respond by telling her that I am "seeing" someone, and she tells me she doesn't get it. "Well are you dating him or are you not?" is her response.

The truth is I use the term "seeing someone" because it is ambiguous enough to cover a realm of possibilities, anywhere from casually sleeping with someone to dating someone I actually really like.

I mean the biggest difference between my life now and my seventh grade years (and my mother's generation apparently) is the addition of sex. Throwing in sexual encounters adds a whole new dimension of unclear relationships.

Now, instead of just a simple boyfriend relationship, there are countless ways that my friends and I describe the dudes in our life:

Sleeping together
Dating casually
Dating and sleeping together
Dating but not sleeping together
Dating, but not boyfriend/girlfriend
Friends who sleep together
Exclusively dating but not boyfriend/girlfriend
Exclusively sleeping together but not boyfriend/girlfriend

The last two are particularly confusing because in my world, once you throw the word "exclusively" into the mix, it means you're in a relationship. But according to my friends, people can be exclusively seeing each other, but not be boyfriend and girlfriend yet. The distinction is slight, but apparently it's there.

Now tell me you're not confused.

I had my own first-person encounter with this bizarre situation about a year ago when I was dating this one guy for quite a while (by that, I mean more than a month), and we'd even had the exclusivity talk and decided to not see anyone else but each other. Even then, he was averse to the terms "boyfriend" and "girlfriend," so he refused to call me his girlfriend at any point during the few months we were dating.

I wound up being completely confused about what to call him, because I defaulted to referring to him as my boyfriend, and then would have to backtrack and say "I mean the guy I'm dating, I mean seeing, I mean the dude I have monogamous feelings for, I mean sleeping with exclusively for a long time, I mean I'm not sure, what was the question?"

I attribute his lack of enthusiasm to the boyfriend/girlfriend thing as just general male commitmentphobia, but it really led me to more confusion than necessary given my normally dizzy state of mind.

With such nebulous ways to describe things, it's no wonder that I miss the days of seventh grade when hand-holding was a clear indication of a relationship.