make a mess and fuck all the rest

per wikipedia: "the decompositional perspective towards meaning holds that the meaning of words can be analyzed by defining meaning atoms or primitives, which establish a language of thought."

which is, i realize, some deep thinkin' for first thing on a tuesday morning.

i do, of course, have a point.

last night i went into town to have dinner with the architect and some of his friends. while at the table, his best friend leaned across and inquired "has he asked you to stop seeing other people yet?" to which i said 'no, i sort of did that on my own'. my major issue with the way people do internet dating is that if you were to meet someone at a club, or a party, or wherever, and you were interested in seeing them, you wouldn't be actively pursuing a multitude of other people at the same time. or at least i wouldn't.

so i figured that once we'd gone out four times (and keep in mind that date four was pretty much spending an entire weekend together) i'd just stop *looking* for anyone else. the architect and i were talking about this as we walked home, and i said something about us 'seeing' each other. he corrected me and said we were 'dating'.

to me, 'dating' is something you do when you are interested in seeing more than one person. when you are 'seeing' someone, you are only with them, but would not necessarily consider yourself in a full blown 'relationship'.

so, of course, i puzzled over his phrasing the rest of the way to his house. once we got upstairs, and he had fed me some dark chocolate with raspberries in it, i questioned him on his semantics. i explained my personal definitions, and said that, to me, dating was being with more than one person - sexually or otherwise. he replied that, until he moved here, his definitions were like mine. it's only since he moved here that he's rethought them, as it seems like women in vancouver think the opposite way from me. he said he wasn't interested in seeing other people - just me.

which, of course, i liked.

then, to prove his point, he spread a towel out on the floor and turned me into jello with quite possibly the best massage i've had in years. this, of course, i liked even better.

so, question of the day - what are the levels you pass through when you are 'with' someone? for me it's meeting, dating, seeing, relationship, end (via death of one of the two people or death of the relationship, whichever comes first). am i missing anything? do you have more/less/different stages?