How long did it take for you to see her (his) true self?

[Gaeta]

I have been wondering about this lately.

 

We all are on our best behavior when we start dating someone new.

 

If you think of when you met your GF or BF, or when you met your ex(s). How long did it take for you to see their flaws? their annoying habits? their pet peeves? and such. It could also be about how long it took you to discover their greatest qualities, their talents, their generosity, their integrity, and such.

 

Thanks :-)

[TheBladeRunner]

Just remember: EVERYONE is on their BEST behavior for 6 months

[AMJ]

I pick up on negative or annoying things about a person right away. But when I like this person for 10,000 other reasons, the good outweighs the bad, and I rationalize it all away. Or when I'm being the biggest of idiots, I love him more for his faults. Ugh.

[Dis]

I have been wondering about this lately.

 

We all are on our best behavior when we start dating someone new.

 

If you think of when you met your GF or BF, or when you met your ex(s). How long did it take for you to see their flaws? their annoying habits? their pet peeves? and such. It could also be about how long it took you to discover their greatest qualities, their talents, their generosity, their integrity, and such.

 

Thanks :-)

 

My previous ex showed his true colors after about 4 and a half weeks. But he had some serious issues. Unfortunately I didnt see any redeming qualties after that.

[Ruby Slippers]

I agree that people usually start to truly relax in a state of coupledom around 6 months. I think that's when you get a clearer view of the person's true nature, rather than the parts they're choosing to show you or let you see.

[neowulf]

I have been wondering about this lately.

 

We all are on our best behavior when we start dating someone new.

 

If you think of when you met your GF or BF, or when you met your ex(s). How long did it take for you to see their flaws? their annoying habits? their pet peeves? and such. It could also be about how long it took you to discover their greatest qualities, their talents, their generosity, their integrity, and such.

 

Thanks :-)

 

I think you can speed up the process through varied experiences and careful observation.

 

People are often precious about their relationships at first, being afraid to test them. A better approach is to place each other into a wide variety of different situations and observe how each other deals.

 

I think going travelling to a new country is a great way to see someone's "rough edges". Placing people under stress is one way to make the mask slip.

 

That said, in the end, all of us have our demons. Trick is to find out if you can live with each others

[Toodaloo]

6 months.

 

People can not carry on acting, their true natures show through and they reveal themselves.

 

That said if you look closely and observe you can often see them sooner.

 

With my ex I should have known 3 months in what the following years would be like. Sadly I didn't listen and I made excuses for him as he was doing such wonderful lovely things for me to woo me...

 

Never again.

 

These days I watch very carefully to see how people are around others and how they treat others. Its a sign of things to come.

 

Neo is right. Under stress peoples true colours always shine through.

[candie13]

5-6 months. Maybe it's the time needed to gain back objectivity. It's a process, anyways. It's also good to see how you feel about their real self. If disappointed and off - bad signs. If you're even more into them despite those character flaws - then you're with the right guy.

[Blanco]

Last relationship, it was six months. The shift wasn't extreme in really overt ways, so it was harder for me to just break it off. But in retrospect, I was never at ease with the relationship for long after that. Kind of crazy, considering it lasted three years.

 

I find that the time spent together really factors in, too. With one girlfriend, we spent almost all of our free time together, so it only took about six or seven weeks for my jerky tendencies to bubble up.

[burnt]

About 15 years...

I am a little slow apparently

 

Did you ever see V--the mini-series? I watched it as a kid--there was this scene of the really hot woman, standing in front of the mirror, peeling her skin off and finally it revealed that underneath she was an alien green lizard.

Ok strike that comment.

 

umm… ahem, anyway,

Good question Gaeta! A good chunk of the entire last year I spent wondering about the same question (and still am).

 

A better approach is to place each other into a wide variety of different situations and observe how each other deals.

 

Aww Gawd! Now I have this other awful imagine running in my head--you putting some little mouse in a lab injecting chemicals, performing experiments, making observations and writing test results in your charts with "c'mon mouse show me the result" like watching pop corns in the microwave waiting for them to go POP.

 

Ok…strike the last comment too. Oh my sick mind.

 

Placing people under stress is one way to make the mask slip.

 

Well, my belief these days is, people don't actually put on masks; people actually DO show who they are honestly. But we project our own ideas of what we "want" to believe about them onto them.

 

Then under stressful situation, we finally see the flaw in OUR own perception, then we think the other person was wearing a "mask" the entire time; the reality is we created the 'thought' mask and put it on their faces ourselves.

 

It's not the mask on the other person that slips, but rather it's the mask in our perception that finally slips that makes us see others as they really are.

 

On a separate note,

It's so true about what you said about stress though.

But stress makes us see our own true colors, more than the true colors of others.

 

It's a much more frightening thing to observe: to see the 'mask' on yourself coming off under stress and realizing how little you knew yourself to begin with.

 

These days I watch very carefully to see how people are around others and how they treat others. Its a sign of things to come.

 

No comment about the above.

Just 100% agree--so incredibly true.

[Eternal Sunshine]

It depends on how much time you spend together but I would say about 2-3 months for me. If I have time to really focus, even earlier than that. I am very good at reading people and am not afraid to test them even early on.

[Lois_Griffin]

It's said we don't meet the real person when we begin dating them - we meet their 'dating ambassador.'

 

I've found that it usually takes only 2-3 months before the crazy starts to come out.

[Phoenician]

normal ppl , once you bond , live together or become partners...

abnormal people like passive aggressive , years and years ; but the important is that you never discover it without help before u r stuck with a family ...

[Art_Critic]

6 months or so has been my experience.. however, there are things about my wife that didn't show up till after we were married about a year, so we had known each other years by then.. she has a tendency to care too much about what other people think of her so she had her guard up pretty long and some of her true self showed late in the game.. it's all good though...

[Larryville]

How long did it take for you to see their flaws? their annoying habits? their pet peeves?

 

Wow, I had to seriously process this… came down to depends on how much you are into them.

 

I pick up on negative or annoying things about a person right away. But when I like this person for 10,000 other reasons, the good outweighs the bad, and I rationalize it all away.

 

Yup

 

Processing everyone I have went out with post-divorce... flaws right away..

 

Three I went out with was the first time I visited their houses (cleanliness, another lied about being a smoker, another seriously messy)

 

Another the first time I went to pick her up but she did not want me to come to her door (turned out she was living with her daughter, financial issues, also when she wanted to go to a casino for a date)

 

Another woman after one of our early phone conversations and she was yelling at her daughter over and over.

 

One after an early conversation mentioned how insecure she was about her freckles. This was a 45 year old woman, attractive redhead but she clearly did not like how she looked seriously insecure even though she was a successful business woman.

 

After seeing the flaws yes did continue to see for a bit but I immediately knew they would not be long term. The other thing do you consider the "flaw" a deal breaker. I knew in the back of my mind it was but tried to deal with.

 

Now for my two marriages not until the very end of each marriage 10 and 14 years respectively until I truly saw the flaws and irritations.

 

First wife, early red flag poor money habits, ignoring that cost me big time at the end.

 

The woman I was most into ever, never saw the flaws while with her, I clearly see them now but LONG after we parted ways.

 

My point… depends on how into them you are, I don’t think there is a time frame.

 

the good outweighs the bad,

 

thinking... is someone being mean to a server in a restaurant the same flaw level as someone who snores, is messy, rude, selfish?

 

Is someone who loves animals, shares same political views, loves sci-fi, the same good trait level as someone who is financially secure?

 

I'm making this way too complicated... backing away from keyboard

[Lady2163]

If I really think about it, I knew within a month my exH and I were not compatible. But I was young and wrote off some warning signs.

 

He had mother issues - and he really shouldn't have. WARNING.

The sex was really bad - very one sided - all about him. WARNING

He cheerfully accepted presents from his family (and me) but made no effort to return the birthday or Christmas sentiments. He may have been 29 years old, but since he was "the baby" of the family he didn't feel it was expected of him.

 

So, I ignored some warning sides, tried to subtly and not-so subtly change him and/or bring him around to my perspective.

 

Seven months into dating, we moved in together. Within a month of that I was miserable and knew I shouldn't get married. They used to say that first year of marriage is the worst. I kept attributing it to that. It was just a change for both of us to get used to each other.

 

Since I can't get pregnant, there is NO way I would ever marry someone again WITHOUT living with them for at least a year.

 

Any kind of traveling can show aptitude, skills and grace under pressure. It took three times of royally getting lost and many hours wasted before I learned I couldn't read while he drove. He couldn't read a map and one time ignored signs for TWO HOURS saying a mountain road was closed. His reasoning? Because this was the route I had chosen, I must know better...

 

I would walk away from some relationships sooner. I dated an alcoholic once and he complained about an ex who was really an alcoholic. At that time, I asked how much he thought a person had to drink to be an alcoholic? He drank 10-12 beers a day during a 12 hour period in three regular bars he frequented. He always insisted that the bar wasn't his life and I believed he wanted to get out and do other things. Every time we scheduled something there was always some emergency with one of his bar friends that required.....going to the bar to fix it!

 

I was pretty stupid.

 

So now, I listen to how a man talks about his exes, his mother, his sisters.

 

I don't fight to make a round peg fit in a square hole. If he drinks more than what I'm comfortable with or smokes pot/other drugs, I'm not pursuing it.

 

If the first time I see where he lives and the bathroom hasn't been cleaned since Bush was President, the kitchen is filthy, the refrigerator is empty and the bed isn't made, that's more than I want to try and change. This sounds awful, but I don't date a lot of men who aren't at least lower middle class. Most of the men I date can afford groceries and if they can't be bothered to clean their place, they can afford to bring in someone 1-2 a month to clean it.

 

But it goes even deeper than that. The first time you show someone your apartment or house and it looks like a bachelor pad or pay by the hour hotel, that tells me a man isn't even TRYING to put his best side forward. And I make sure the first time I go to his place it isn't a last minute, spontaneous thing.

 

I don't know that there can be a specific time frame for every relationship. But I do think there can be some specific events and stressors that will show true colors. It just depends on how long it takes you as a couple to reach those milestones.

[Redhead14]

Very often, someone will experience something with a new dating partner very early on that shows them who that person is and how they deal with certain significant things and that causes them to be upset, confused and hurt but they will brush it aside and continue to date them. And, later, when it happens again, they are upset, hurt and confused again -- instead of saying, oh gosh, this happened a few months ago, I'm not surprised, I guess I need to end the relationship because this kind of thing doesn't work for me.

 

My point is, sometimes people see things really early, but keep dating the person. You can't know for sure if it's a blip the first time, perhaps, but if it happens again, the pattern is developing.

 

That being said, it takes a few months if most things are going well otherwise for people to drop the facade -- being their "honeymoon" selves. You just need to be in observation mode for a long time really because it takes time for things to arise. In other words, you can't experience everything that may need to be dealt with in a period of a few months -- how they deal with a death, how they deal with financial issues, how they deal with family issues, what their views are on certain issues because you can't see all that until they happen. That takes a long time.

 

And, when that facade is dropped, that's when the real evaluating begins. You are now evaluating the "new person" you're seeing, the real them, and whether or not that works for you.

 

I will say this though, that the couples who say their honeymoon period never ended are the couples who were being themselves from the very start.

[Gaeta]

Getting to know someone is a continual experience. As someone who's been married 15 years I can confirmed I've discovered aspects of him 6-7-8 years into our marriage. Not huge things but still aspects of him never encountered before. It was often related to new stress, new problems, never encountered before as well.

 

As for someone character flaws I think those should come up quite early in the dating phase if you spend a decent amount of time together. Like a couple of posters have mentioned I think it's important to expose your relationship to all kinds of situations and see how they handle themselves like practicing a sport together, handling a renovation project together (that will kill any weak relationship lol), going away together, meeting family and friends, etc.

 

A good indication of their character would also be how they handle your first disagreement. But then again how they handle your first disagreement will be influenced by how YOU yourself handle that disagreement.

[kodakgirl]

I don't think there's any way to turn this into a quantitative measurement--x number of months. There's a huge difference between 6 months of dating where you go out someplace a couple times a week, and 6 months of dating where you progressively integrate each other into your lives. And there's a huge difference between two people who are serious about wanting a relationship with one another and highly compatible, vs. two people who don't have much in common but attraction and focused on having fun. Add in personality traits like sincerity, honesty, self-esteem, ability to trust, introspection, and desperation, and then add in the possibility of significant life events occurring in the time frame, and you have something that absolutely cannot be determined by external measures.

 

My boyfriend and I, for instance, have only known each other 2.5 months, and while I'll admit only time can prove how much of his "true self" I currently know, I feel I have very concrete reasons to believe he left his "dating ambassador" behind long ago (as I know I did). We are both sincere, caring, sensitive people who started developing an atmosphere of trust, respect, and safety from the very beginning--there's never been any judgement or negativity attached to any acts of self-disclosure, which of course has encouraged them to progress. We both know ourselves and our needs very well and have the self-esteem to stay true to them, and to respect each other's. We've both spent time single and know we can rely on ourselves, so we're drawn together through positive desire to be together, not a negative desire not to be alone. We've spent a lot of quality time together--talking and simply being together, no need to show off or impress one another.

 

It's been tested, too--as others have noted, stress definitely brings out true colours, and we've had that. I have a severe chronic illness, and was struggling with it being worse than usual from mid-January (when we'd only been dating a month) onwards, including a 10-day hospitalization. This was of course a lot of emotional stress for both of us, especially as we'd already come to love each other (and, for the reasons given above, I do believe it's not silly to call it love, even at "only" a month). But both of us consistently offered each other care, understanding, support, and flat-out enjoyment of one another through it, and our relationship only came out deeper and stronger.

 

Of course there are still things we don't know about one another, and of course we're both aware of that--it's always a process. But still, I feel that at 2.5 months, we have seen each other's true selves-- at this point it's a matter of seeing more of them, not of simply getting to the thing itself.

[central]

After 16 years, I still don't know everything about my wife. However, she has been consistent since the first date - it just took the usual year-plus to truly SEE and confirm that this was the case, after going through all kinds of experiences and challenges together. There were no negative surprises - only good ones.

[Gaeta]

After 16 years, I still don't know everything about my wife. However, she has been consistent since the first date - it just took the usual year-plus to truly SEE and confirm that this was the case, after going through all kinds of experiences and challenges together. There were no negative surprises - only good ones.

 

I think consistency is very important and it's something that can be detected quite early in a person.

[fitnessfan365]

Cool topic.

 

My GF has pretty much been the same woman she was from the beginning. Her sarcastic/blunt personality turned some guys off and they found her too challenging. But I found it really attractive. Since I'm the same way, I was able to see right through her and she let her walls down. The only real change I've seen over the last year is that she's way more of a softie than she used to be. I used to tease her that underneath it all she was a big marshmallow and as hard as she tried to deny it, it's obvious now.

[Lady2163]

In some ways, as I have gotten older it is easier to spot incompatibility. I was never totally certain I wanted children, so it wasn't as important to me if a man passed the "will he be a good father" test. That caused me to overlook some glaring red flags. If I had been more child motivated, I think there would have been a lot more, "hell, no" in my life.

 

One other test or hurdle is if you like them more than they like you or you want more than they are giving? How do they treat you from that point forward? I look back at two men who I said, "I love you" and they refused to say it back. On one hand, kudos they didn't say it because they didn't feel it. On the other hand, at that point I needed to walk away because they didn't feel it after all that we had gone through. But logic wasn't there. I couldn't imagine my life without them and they knew it. Again, looking back, I describe both of them as abusive and narcissistic. They probably wouldn't see it that way.

[Timshel]

I have been wondering about this lately.

 

We all are on our best behavior when we start dating someone new.

 

If you think of when you met your GF or BF, or when you met your ex(s). How long did it take for you to see their flaws? their annoying habits? their pet peeves? and such. It could also be about how long it took you to discover their greatest qualities, their talents, their generosity, their integrity, and such.

 

Thanks :-)

 

After my husband passed, I had zero interest in having a romantic relationship. I was done. When I met my current bf, finding something about him that was incompatible was my main objective....poor guy.

So for the first several months, he was under a microscope and I was trying to find reasons to tell him to take a hike.

 

Now, he's valiantly held firm and I am so appreciative of who he is as a man and person. I love this guy, not with rose colored lenses but for his strength and integrity...yes, I mean that.

The bonus is that he has been exposed to the worst I can be and now we are both reaping the love.

 

Cool thread Gaeta.

[Alamo657]

I saw it immediately.

 

But when you're in love, faults and mistakes belong to the past.

 

It's only later when you 're thrown **** in the face that you realize you were a fool...