We’ve Been Calculating The Length of Our Relationships All Wrong

The actual timeline and what it means for us.

Christopher Kokoski
Published in
5 min readAug 24, 2021

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Picture of author with hand covering half his face beside the title — We’ve Been Calculating the Length of Our Relationships All Wrong
Image by the Author via Canva

It’s not uncommon to hear people say, “We’ve only been together for three months,” or, “We’ve been together for 10 years.” But how do they know how long they’ve been together?

Relationship experts have suggested that this is the wrong way to measure the length of a relationship.

Instead, I’d like you to consider that:

“Relationships don’t end when you break up, they end when you stop caring.” — Christopher Kokoski

Relationships End When You Stop Caring

What if you calculated the length of your relationship based on when you stopped caring about it?

It seems like a small thing, right? Most people base the number of years they’ve been in a relationship on the last time they broke up and came back together instead of the last time they stopped caring.

When you stop caring is much more telling of the length of your relationship than a series of breakups and makeups that were all a part of one long, never-ending argument.

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Christopher Kokoski
Heart Affairs

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