I was saying that a 100 hours should be a minimum. Various friends have said they need to date for "at least 'x' number of years", before getting married. To each his own.
The goal is to try to get to know the person to such a degree that you can decide intelligently whether you truly want to spend the rest of your life with them.
I personally think dating for 3 years or more is excessive, and prefer something shorter. But I would, at the very least have an intense dating period of 6 months or more, before deciding on something as important as marriage.
There is just no telling. Keep in mind that your mate will only show you part of their self and hide many other parts. So do you. Many people find out well into their relationships that their partners is XYZ and XYW.
3 months and 3 years and 3 hours are not so different, although they provide some false comfort.
If you really are serious and want to build a long term relationship, the safest step to take is bring a list of questions and a polygraph.
They are very different. There are things you can hide for 3 hours that will easily leak in 3 months, let alone 3 years. It's easy to get through 3 hours on basically bullshit small talk.
I think part of the thing is recognizing patterns of behavior. For example, now that I am 31, I am really getting to know my parents. Things they said when I was 17 all make sense now, because I've seen the patterns again and again in recent years.
Part of is growing up and part of it is more awareness of human nature, and part of it is a lot of reflection. So in a dating relationship, the more time spent with the person, the better. Its also important to learn something about their past relationships. With my ex I wasn't really listening when she said that she was the problem in all her past relationships.
I figured that was all in the past. But in my experience, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. IMO, people only change under extreme circumstances.
