When do you consider him/her a boyfriend/girlfriend?

[Treeglow Flicker 13,852]

For me it would be when they make a formal confession of love and I share the same feelings towards them. Or if I make a formal confession of love and they share the same feelings towards me. Dating for me is a process of getting to know someone with the potential of something more blooming. So dating alone wouldn't really count as a formal boyfriend/girlfriend relationship for me. There has to be solid emotional attachment and intimacy for it to reach that level.

[Brony Number 42 10,072]

What is this "girlfriend" of which you speak?

[Twiggy 2,966]

Never really thought about it tbh. I'm not entirely sure. The line between casual and serious can be grey. One of my serious relationships in the past acknowledged this with a conversation after about a month of dating, but other than that it just morphed from casual to serious after a while.

If I had to make a guess, it would probably be once I start sacrificing time and money doing things I exclusively like in favor of spending time and money on her.

[SharpWit 2,708]

I've only got the one time experience with the current one, would love for it to stay that way, but it kind of just happened I guess. We hung out for a day with completely platonic intentions and had a great time. We knew each other before hand which helped a lot. By the end of the day we just didn't want it to end, and we made plans to hang out again and go see a movie. That was great too and independently we confirmed that we had feelings for the other person but weren't completely sure how the other felt. We're a cautious pair . She had a Christmas party planned that I and some mutual friends of ours were invited to. We did a white elephant gift exchange, but there were some personal gifts as well, ours for each other were extra special, mine a bit too special, so I decided I'd go back to a place we had gone to before to get something that had caught her eye. I was invited for a third outing, this time with some of her immediate family, and that was a lot of fun. The end of the day was sad. It was going to be the last time we'd see each other for several months, and there was this feeling of something left unsaid, but the courage to say it in that moment wasn't and knowing we'd be far apart soon anyways made it painful so we gave awkward goodbyes. I had gotten her gift for her, planning to mail it as a surprise when she got back to school, but I knew I had to see her one more time before she left, so I delivered it in person along with some food made especially for her. We hung out and talked for the whole evening. I laid down by her dog on their living room floor and she joined me. Slowly we edged ourselves closer, her head on my shoulder and our hands together. with her other one she was playing with the string on my hoodie and talking extra softly. It was abundantly clear that we liked each other by that point, and I asked her just to make it official. Our relationship is still relatively young, but it's the best thing that's ever happened to me, and we're going strong.

I don't know how common it is for people to date unofficially at this point. Many seem to meet online and ask each other out, and you tend to become official by going out I'd say at least twice because now there's the intention to see each other continuously. But I honestly don't know how that all works out.

[Dreambiscuit 10,092]

When you get to know someone well, and spend a lot of time together to the point where it's obviously gone from just a passing acquaintance to a meaningful friendship with a romantic overtone, then it will feel more like boyfriend or girlfriend.