Are you in a ‘backwards’ relationship?

THESE days, romance doesn’t have to adhere to a traditional timeline. That doesn’t mean people won’t be judgmental.

IN 2016 the term “traditional relationship” is pretty hard to define. For our grandparents “till death do us part” was an ideal they sometimes seemed more committed to than their own happiness but these days we accept that while “happily ever after” would be delightful, it’s not necessarily guaranteed.

This understanding has opened our minds to the idea that romance doesn’t have to adhere to a conventional timeline. But when you find yourself in the middle of a backwards relationship you realise people aren’t as done with tradition as they’d have you believe.

Rachel and her partner.

For the uninitiated, a backwards relationship is any pairing that doesn’t follow the traditional relationship trajectory. I’m talking about couples that get pregnant before they’re engaged, move in two weeks after meeting or put a ring on it before they’ve even gotten to know each other.

In the past, despite considering my mind as open as 7 Eleven, I’ll admit I was sceptical about these relationships. So it’s unsurprising that karma would dish out a liberal dose of my own medicine and throw me head first into exactly the type of union I would have previously judged. What a delicious irony.

Despite only recently passing the one-year mark, my boyfriend and I have occasionally found ourselves on the receiving end of judgment that seems fresh out of 1925. And while I’m not preparing to pop out babies or walk down the aisle any time soon, in the past 12 months we have done a few things out of conventional order, including …

Partially planning our wedding

For a couple that’s not engaged this is quite the conversation stopper, especially since we’ve been chatting about it since well before the three-month probation period was over. And before your antiquated gender stereotypes kick into gear, this isn’t because every time he says, “pass the salt” I say, “let’s talk about marriage.” We both thought pretty early on we’d found the elusive ‘one’ so it didn’t feel weird discussing an event we were confident would happen one day. Sure we might have pushed it a little far when we discussed the logistics of hosting it on his parents’ property and actually got a few quotes but hey, it pays to be prepared …. even if it is potentially three-years before the event.

Rachel and her partner.

Meeting the parents

Even I’m impressed how quickly we got this one out of the way since I met him on a boat in Vietnam while on holidays with his family. We didn’t start dating until a year after we met but nothing takes the edge off meeting the parents like the fact you’ve already been on holiday with them for a week in a foreign country.

Opening a joint bank account

This one’s a fun one to bring up around the traditionalists, especially since we opened ours after a month. It really was more practical than anything since we live in separate states and use it to pay for flights, dinners and anything else we do together but it’s an impressive eyebrow raiser when you whip it out five weeks into a relationship.

Putting each other in our wills

Nothing screams romance like talking about dying. At the time this seemed logical since our mortgage broker (a separate point in itself) asked if either of us had a will. Anyone who’s answered this question with “why do we need one?” knows how well that goes down with a financial professional, so we decided to have them drawn up. Since at this point in our lives we’d leave each other everything anyway, that’s what we did. If either of us ends up mysteriously disappearing off the back of a boat in the next couple of months consider this article as evidence.

So I hereby apologise to all the couples I’ve secretly judged in the past for adhering to their own timeline. While I questioned why you would rush into things when you had forever in front of you I now realise the old adage is true — when you know, you know.

Follow Rachel Corbett on Facebook and Twitter and hear her on the Paul and Rach Podcast.