How many dates before a relationship? (And before exclusive, or sex)

Updated October 5, 2026 · 13 min read

We found no study that counts dates before a couple becomes exclusive or official. The figures people quote, five and six dates, come from a 2017 company survey and a 2015 reader survey that never published their question. The two that asked about sex and exclusivity put them in opposite order. Each is traced below. We add no rule.

People type this as one question, and it is three: when you stop seeing other people, when you call it a relationship, and when you have sex. The surveys answer them separately, sometimes in a different order, so this page keeps them apart. We read every survey behind the numbers we could trace, the studies closest to the question, the pages that rank for it, and threads on Mumsnet, a British parenting forum, and The Student Room, a UK student forum.

Our view: a count of dates stands in for a conversation. Some people asking how many dates may be asking when to say what this is, and that talk has its own page, DTR. Skip to what the surveys report around each date.

How many dates before a relationship?

No survey we found measured it directly. What exists are averages and shares from polls that asked different questions, and laid out by date they look like this. None of these surveys followed anyone from a first date onward; they asked for opinions or for memories.

What the surveys report around each date

Typical answers from surveys, not a schedule. Different surveys asked different people different things.

Who asked matters as much as the numbers. Time Out polled its readers in 24 cities and published the results on February 13, 2015, from 11,373 responses by people who chose to answer (Time Out, 2015). Groupon’s survey of 2,000 US adults was conducted by OnePoll and commissioned by Groupon, in a release promoting Groupon+ cash-back restaurant deals, and it gives no fieldwork dates (Groupon, 2017). Mic ran a Google survey of 3,058 people in February 2015 and does not say where they lived (Mic, 2015). Match’s Singles in America asked 5,481 US singles what they had done, so its figures are recall (Match, 2013). None of the three that report an exclusivity figure published the question behind it.

The two surveys that asked about both milestones disagree on the order. Time Out’s readers put sex first, at 3.53 dates, and exclusivity at six. Groupon’s respondents put exclusivity first, at five dates, and sex at eight. Our reading: neither is wrong. Different people answered different questions, two years apart.

Forum answers run wider still. In a Mumsnet thread started November 21, 2022, “How long were you dating before you made things official?”, about 31 replies ranged from after the first date to several months (Mumsnet, 2022a). On The Student Room, a thread started November 28, 2020, “How many dates before a relationship?”, drew about 14 replies, one of which called it “a how long is a piece of string question. theres no right answer” (The Student Room, 2020).

This site has two timing rules of thumb, both ours and neither a finding. On talking stage: “if you have met twice and still cannot say what you want after about a month, say it or stop.” On situationship: “if the ‘what are we’ question has been open for about three months without an answer, the silence is the answer.” This page adds no timeline of its own.

How many dates before being exclusive?

Exclusive and official are two different steps. Exclusive means neither of you is seeing anyone else. Official means the word: said to each other first, then to other people. A couple can agree to the first and leave the second for later.

The one study we found on their order puts exclusivity first. Fox, Warber and Makstaller ran ten focus groups with US college students and wrote in the abstract: “Typically, relationship exclusivity precedes a discussion on becoming FBO, which occurs when the relationship is considered stable” (Fox et al., 2013). FBO means Facebook official. It is a small qualitative study from 2013, when a relationship status on Facebook was the public step; the current words for that step are soft launch and hard launch. In the November 2022 Mumsnet thread, one reply put it more bluntly: “this ‘being official’ thing is essentially social media driven” (Mumsnet, 2022a).

For exclusivity counted in dates, the table holds the only two figures we found: five in Groupon’s 2017 company survey and six in Time Out’s 2015 reader survey (Groupon, 2017; Stylist, 2015). The six reaches us through Stylist. We could not find Time Out’s own page with that figure, and neither survey published the question it asked. Mic’s poll measured weeks instead, and under four weeks was the most common answer for when the exclusivity talk happens (Mic, 2015).

The two polls we found on whether exclusivity is said aloud are from 2013 and 2014, and their answer options differ. YouGov asked 1,852 British adults on December 9 and 10, 2013 when a relationship becomes “exclusive”, with more than one answer allowed: 34% said after multiple dates, 34% after a spoken agreement, and 18% did not know (YouGov GB, 2013a; YouGov GB, 2013b). In YouGov’s US article from January 2014, which does not give its sample size, 55% chose “a spoken conversation”, on an answer worded differently from the British one (YouGov US, 2014). The polls are more than a decade old.

Two British sources mark the change. In 2012, an opinion piece in Cherwell, an Oxford student paper, said that in the UK you “would never go on dates with multiple people at the same time” because “it would be viewed as cheating” (Cherwell, 2012). Ten years later, in a Mumsnet thread started August 23, 2022, “How many dates before you make things exclusive?”, one of about 36 replies called the exclusivity chat “quite a new thing that’s come in with OLD, at least in UK dating culture”, OLD being online dating (Mumsnet, 2022b). Our reading: apps brought the American default, several people at once until someone says otherwise, into British dating, which may be why British threads now ask the question. That is our inference from these sources, and no study we found tested it.

We found no peer-reviewed study that counts dates before couples become exclusive or official.

Is three dates too soon to be exclusive? Too soon is whatever one of you has not agreed to. Until someone raises it, nothing has been agreed either way. Seeing several people openly in the meantime is roster dating, and casual dating covers the other versions of not exclusive yet.

How many dates before sex?

We found no number of dates that studies or surveys mark as too soon or too late. It happens when both people want it, either of you can change your mind at any point, and a yes on one date is not a yes for the next. The figures below are opinions and memories from surveys, and none of them is about any particular two people.

Attitudes first. In Pew Research Center’s survey of 4,860 US adults, fielded October 16 to 28, 2019, 5% said sex on a first date is always acceptable, 25% sometimes, 27% rarely and 42% never; for kissing, 15% said always and 58% sometimes (Pew Research Center, 2020b). YouGov asked 1,686 British adults on January 31 and February 1, 2022 about sex “on or just after a first date”: 36% called it acceptable and 54% unacceptable, with 45% of men and 28% of women saying acceptable (YouGov GB, 2022b).

On the three-date rule itself, the most useful survey is one that printed its question. In 2021, the Kinsey Institute and Lovehoney, a sex-toy retailer, asked 2,200 Americans: “How many in-person dates would you want to have with a new partner before having sex with that person?” The median answer was three, but only 21% chose exactly three; 38% would want fewer and 41% more (Lehmiller, 2021). The survey was company-funded. Our reading: three is the middle of a wide range, and most people stand somewhere else in it.

Behavior is a separate question. In Match’s 2012 Singles in America survey, company data from 5,481 US singles, “almost a third” said they had had sex by the third date and “almost half” by the sixth, by their own recall (Match, 2013). Sassler, Addo and Lichter studied nearly 600 low- to moderate-income US couples with children and found that “over one third of respondents became sexually involved within the first month of the relationship” (Sassler et al., 2012).

Groupon’s 2017 release is where “eight dates” comes from. It reports “an average of eight dates before they have sex, with women waiting nine compared to five for men”, and that 30% of men and 8% of women think sex should happen inside the first three dates (Groupon, 2017). By our arithmetic, an average of eight from nine and five would need about three women for every man among the 2,000 respondents; the release does not explain it.

The research on timing and later relationship quality is on third date ideas. In brief, waiting went with better outcomes in a study of married people (Busby et al., 2010) and in one of people in unmarried relationships (Willoughby et al., 2014), and neither design can separate the timing from the people who choose it. A Chicago-area study found the difference disappeared once wanting something serious was counted (Paik, 2010); casual dating has the details.

Forum threads show the same spread. In a Mumsnet thread started June 2, 2023, “How many dates before sex..”, one of about 24 replies said: “Have sex when you want to have sex and feel ready for it. You can’t put a number on it IMO” (Mumsnet, 2023). A thread started September 13, 2020, “Sex- when/exclusivity?”, with about 25 replies, is the one we found that asks both questions at once, and replies split on which should come first (Mumsnet, 2020).

Is it serious after three dates?

It is as serious as both of you say it is. Three dates mean two evenings went well enough to book a third. What each of you wants from it has not been said until someone says it. If you are still reading the first one, signs a first date went well sorts the usual signs by evidence. Where the three-date rule came from is on third date ideas.

Two more number rules get attached to this question. The 3-3-3 rule sets three checkpoints, most often three dates, three weeks and three months, and its versions disagree. The 3-6-9 rule splits the first nine months of a relationship into stages. We found no study behind either.

The pages that rank do not settle it. Brides’ “How Many Dates Before Your Relationship Is Official?”, updated November 10, 2025, gives no number, and its expert, Sarah Kahan, LCSW, says: “There is no real number that I can give” (Brides, 2025). Mamamia’s “8 date rule” of October 23, 2025 is eight kinds of date, from coffee to a weekend away, credited to “a viral TikTok” with no creator named, so it says nothing about how many dates come before a relationship (Mamamia, 2025). When we checked on October 5, 2026, Google’s AI answers for these searches cited both pages next to date counts that neither page supports.

How many dates before the first kiss?

We looked for a study giving a date count for the first kiss and found none, and the rules people pass around cite no data. Consent, the polls and the rules are on kiss on the first date.

If the question underneath is whether there will be a second date at all, what to text after a first date covers the message and second date ideas the plan.

How to use this

• Decide which of the three questions you are asking. Exclusive, official and sex are settled separately, and the surveys treat them separately too.
• Read any number you meet with its survey attached: who asked, who answered, which year, and whether it was an opinion or a memory. Where a figure here lacks one of those, the text says so.
• If the real question is when to say what this is, the scripts are on DTR. The count of dates will not answer it for you.