When is it a bf/gf relationship?

There is no hard and fast "rule" which determines if a relationship is a "bf/gf" one. (I am presuming that abbreviation means "boyfriend/girlfriend").

Those things you mentioned, passage of time, intensity of emotion, exclusivity, certainly figure when people decide whether a relationship is "bf/gf". (or "bf/bf" or "gf/gf".)

A lot depends on who is doing the evaluation, the participants or the people around them in their social setting.

The people around a couple may say that "Mary and Jim are an item" because they know that Mary and Jim see each other regularly, that they are committed to each other, that they don't see anybody else, etc. Certainly those notions are used. But Mary may say "Jim is my boyfriend" while Jim may say "Mary is not my girlfriend, she's just somebody I date now and then".

Two 14 year olds who have been on three dates may consider themselves to be "bf" and "gf", but so may a pair of 35 year olds who live together and have two children.

I need to approach the question of sex with care, not knowing how old you are, but I think I should say that many times, a girl may feel that if she and a boy have slept together, that this kind of makes them more boyfriend and girlfriend than before, but beware, the boy may not be thinking that! (Even though he said so beforehand!)

My girlfriends best friend Caroline was in a 5 year "relationship" with a guy, Jeff, who was always (he said) going to leave his wife Elaine "one day soon". He did, eventually, but that was to take up with a THIRD woman, Susan, who, it turned out, he had been "seeing" for quite a while. He was an ugly little guy who looked like Colonel Gaddhafi as well.

At one and the same time, Caroline thought she was in a "bf/gf" relationship with Jeff. So did Elaine. So did Susan!

The question which forms your post is one that tends to be asked mostly by girls...

Ask the guy in question if he thinks that you and he are in a "bf/gf" relationship and see what he says!

Thanks, contrex. I think my use of internet abbreviations probably implied an age or naivete younger than I am. I suppose I could have asked, "when do you begin considering a paramour something more significant?" but not really knowing the crowd here I thought I'd be more accessible. :-)

In any event my purpose was less to find out if my situation "qualifies" as something and more just to take a survey - when do people find themselves thinking of their "other" as "significant"?

My own situation is one in which I've been seeing someone (several times a week and not what you would call casually, at least in terms of frequency and emotions) for a few months (we are both adults) and he wants no others...yet I balk a bit at the term "boyfriend." He's rather quickly settled into this, though quite independent in other ways, and I suppose my own type of independence is a bit different. I both am not ready to say "boyfriend" and yet find myself sitting back and observing him through the lens of "what would we be like long-term."

Perhaps I'm out of practice doing the boyfriend thing - I'm out of a longish marriage, and my overall types of relationships have been either really light, dating around, lots of guys...or they tend to head into significance early. I've never actually experienced the phenomenon of, say, dating a year both being "committed" and yet "light." Is that even possible? So, I thought I'd check others' experiences and sensibilities in that regard.