7. Mary, 23

I met my SO at a party and we exchanged numbers and hooked up that night. He left the next morning and texted me later that day. We went on some ‘dates’ after that and the rest is history. We’ve been together for 3 1/2 years since that first night and are still going strong. We now live together and are considering marriage.

8. Jason, 37

I was a booty call by my now-wife on Thanksgiving of 2000. We were chatting on AOL Instant Messenger and she said, ‘If it wasn’t so late, I’d ask you over for a beer.’ Sensing what was up, I replied, ‘it’s not that late.’ We hooked up that evening and had casual sex for two more months before we knew we were really into each other. On Easter of 2001, I proposed, and in August of 2002, we were married. We took some ‘us’ time before having our son in April of 2008. We’ve now been together for 16 years.

9. Ruby, 28

Most of my long-term relationships started out casually. How do you know you want to be committed to someone unless you get to know them first? My current boyfriend and I were dating for about three months before we ‘made it official,’ i.e. agreed to stop seeing other people. He wasn’t ready for a serious relationship when we met and was very up front about that, but I knew pretty quickly that I wanted more from him than just casual sex. During that time when we were dating but not committed, I definitely dated and slept with other people. But once we had the DTR talk, I cut it off with everyone else. We’ve been together for three years.

10. Kristine, 23

We actually began seeing each other casually while I was ‘seriously’ (more so for him than me) dating someone else. I had been working on ending it with the other guy for a while, but guilt over his feelings being hurt kept me there until I met my current partner. My current SO and I were reluctant to start a serious relationship for a while for a multitude of reasons — we have quite a big age difference, I had just gotten out of (and cheated in) a relationship, he just got out of a marriage about a year before we met, and we worked together. We eventually realized how much we had in common — from our sense of humor, to our politics, to our desires for ourselves as people… There wasn’t much of an ‘a-ha’ moment or discussion about becoming an item; we pretty much just started referring to each other as ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ about a month and a half into it. We got more ‘serious’ about 3-4 months later when we both realized our feelings for each other were far deeper than we ever thought our relationship would go. We have been together over four years now and living together for about two years.

11. Caitlin, 23

I had been having casual sex with a friend of mine from high school around the beginning of my junior year of college. Eventually we started to realize that we enjoyed each others company for more than just hooking up, and have now been dating for almost three years.