Well, if you are dating someone and you are asked out by another person, it depends on several factors. If you are young and have not reached the stage that you have decided to be exclusive (and if you are having sex you should have already reached this stage) and you are interested in person # 2, go for it. BUT, lets say you are datine 2 or 3 people at one time, after a certain amount of time, say 3 months, and none of the suitors have been willin to be exclusive and talk about it, it is probably time to walk away from that relationship any walk away any way. By 6 months if things are not going in the direction you want, it is time to walk even if the relationship is going well. The older (and more mature) you become, the more focused you will be on what is important and what you really want from a relationship, the easier it is to find "the one" and keep him/her. Well, maybe not easy to find, but easier to know the "right" and "wrong" ones for you.

I don't think there is a timeline on when to be exclusive and would depend on each situation. If he's not comfortable with her dating someone else then he needs to ask her to be exclusive because she may not see anything wrong with it if they've only been on a handful of dates.

I don't think there's a certain amount of time, it just depends on how well things are going and if you're comfortable with having the person seeing other people or not.

With everyone I know, if you call it dating that means you are boyfriend/girlfriend and are exclusive. Before that, you're seeing each other. But if you're seeing someone it may or may not be exclusive.

My boyfriend said he didn't want to see other people after 3 dates. I wouldn't have been seeing other people while I was seeing him anyways though. I don't think he had actually been seeing other girls since our first date either Then I found it kind of confusing because I wasn't sure if that meant he wanted us to be boyfriend/girlfriend or not. But apparently it didn't mean that, because later he asked me to be his girlfriend.

So I think it's important for people to really spell out what they want to avoid problems. Like you said, some people would consider it cheating while other people would see no problem with it, so you have to make sure you're on the same page.

With some people it just clicks... I've met people before that we both just knew we wanted to be exclusive. My husband was that way. I've never done traditional dating, though, as I find it mostly vapid.

I don't think there is a set amount of time - whenever it feels right.