Establishing a relationship is like being promoted at work. Common wisdom is that a lot of times when a promotion becomes “official,” you’ve been half-doing the job for a while anyway — it’s a done deal, and no one is surprised. You just get the title (and hopefully pay bump) that goes with it. It’s formalized. I interact romantically the same way — I just go with where it goes, and by the time the label comes, it’s so obvious that it’s no big deal. Forcing it just doesn’t make sense to me.
If there’s anything I’ve learned from life, it’s that the quickest way to destroy a relationship is to try to make it into something it’s not, to force it into a box that it doesn’t really fit in, and to slap labels on something and assume that those labels give the relationship value.
No, no, and no.
What you end up with is damaged goods in a mislabeled package that ends up absolutely where you didn’t want to send the damn thing in the first place.