You are not meant to become best friends the guy u r dating. Dont forget that the guy u r dating is halachicly a “srange” man and Halachos of Yichud apply as do other halachos. Dont fool yourself into it, ask yourself are all of my dates chaneled to marriage, am I dating for fun or am I just not in the mood of commiting myself etc… The more seriously u take the dating the shorter the process should take u…
Mrs. Beautiful, just because you didn’t need the person you were dating to be really close with you, doesnt make it the only way. I needed my husband (or rather at that time my boyfriend) to be my best friend. I couldn’t marry someone that wasn’t- how could I marry someone but be closer to someone else? Dating him for that long didn’t mean that we transgressed any halacha – it just meant that we needed to be more careful. And yes, the longer we dated the harder it was. We also were restricted to when we could get married because we were both in college and neither of our families could support us.
Oomis, as usual I agree with you 🙂
Poshut, if two weeks in “encouraged” it will turn into pressure. There is no reason to put any “normal” time limit – people who are ready quickly will get engaged quickly, those who arent, won’t.
As for dating more people- maybe there people should date multiple people at a time until deciding one is really worth pursuing.
Tal, what I advise you tell your friends is that they should tell the shadchan that they need more dates to decide and if the guy has a problem with that, then she will move on to a different guy. Pressuring people is so terrible.