Six Weeks In and He Has Planned Your Entire Future

You have been dating him for six weeks, and already he has ideas about Paris. Paris. At six weeks. And he is not speaking vaguely, either.

He knows roughly when you should go, which neighborhood you would love and the sort of little restaurant where the two of you would sit outside until nearly midnight because, naturally, Paris has been waiting for this relationship.

Paris soon makes room for summer by the sea, which somehow leads to Christmas, and before you quite know what has happened, a house has slipped into the conversation as casually as another round of drinks.

Goodness.

The relationship may still be discovering how each of you behaves when dinner is forty minutes late, but the future has already packed beautifully.

Pull back a little and the whole thing begins to resemble one of those exquisite luxury trips where someone has prepared an itinerary before anybody has actually left the hotel. The pages are gorgeous, the destinations could hardly be improved upon, and everything appears wonderfully organized.

The slight complication is that the itinerary seems to be moving considerably faster than the relationship. Hmm.

The Itinerary Is Filling Up Beautifully

At first, all this future talk can feel wonderfully romantic because it gives a very new relationship the size and glow of something that has already been around for years. He does not just like you; he can see the two of you somewhere, and that somewhere keeps becoming more elaborate every time he describes it.

A weekend turns into summer, summer wanders into Christmas, and Christmas somehow comes with a house. Give the conversation another evening and the house is probably going to have a dog.

The poor dog does not know either of you yet, but his future seems secure. The actual relationship, meanwhile, is still only six weeks old.

You have had some lovely dinners, there have been magnificent messages, maybe flowers, declarations and the sort of attention that can make an ordinary afternoon feel as though somebody has quietly upgraded it.

And because the future is described with such confidence, it begins lending weight to the present. Paris stops sounding like a trip someone mentioned and begins feeling strangely real. Then next summer joins in, and before long the imaginary house is sitting there as though somebody has already unpacked.

By now, the itinerary is so detailed that six weeks of dating has begun to feel oddly like shared history.

You have not yet seen him mildly inconvenienced, but apparently the two of you have a preferred hotel in Paris.

Nobody Has Checked Out Yet

The really entertaining part is how quickly experiences that have never happened begin behaving almost like shared memories. He talks about where you will go, what the two of you will do, which places you will love and how funny some future moment will be, until the relationship seems to have returned from several vacations it has never taken.

The relationship is six weeks old and has somehow developed annual traditions.

How convenient.

The future is doing tremendous work.

Frankly, it deserves a vacation of its own.

It is creating romance, history and the peculiar feeling that the two of you have been together far longer than the calendar would suggest.

Before you have quite worked out what next month looks like, he has found somewhere wonderful for next summer. New Year’s, meanwhile, appears to have plans of its own.

At this pace, the imaginary luggage may need its own room.

From farther back, the whole spectacle becomes rather funny. The relationship is six weeks old while the itinerary races ahead collecting terraces, coastlines, holidays and charming breakfasts for two as though somebody has handed it its own passport.

At this point, the calendar itself seems to have skipped several pages.

The Future Is Having Marvelous Trips

By now, the future is having a magnificent time. It has excellent hotels, beautiful holidays and, somehow, a standing reservation for anniversaries.

Nothing strange about those things not having happened yet—they are future plans, after all. The funny part is how much history this six-week-old relationship already seems to possess.

Reality, meanwhile, remains stubbornly six weeks old.

And yet somewhere ahead, Paris has a favorite neighborhood, Christmas has become an annual event and the imaginary house is looking increasingly settled.

From a little farther back, it is quite a sight: six weeks of dating, three imaginary anniversaries, a favorite hotel in Paris and several Christmases already lined up.

Sir is six weeks into the relationship and somehow halfway through the memoir.