Well, if things are good the way they are, that’s all you need to say.
If there’s something you want to change, you bring it up. “I think we should start sleeping over at each others’ place more.”
If there’s something you want to make sure of, bring it up. “Hey, just checking to be sure, we’re being exclusive, right?”
The basic idea is that you actually talk about where each of you is, so that you don’t have to assume. In theory, if you’re in a relationship with someone, and it’s physically intimate to the point that you’re actually having sex, it ought to be emotionally intimate enough that you can talk about your emotional needs, at least in specific, practical purposes.
In my case, the talk doesn’t have a big production. The last instance was during commercial breaks, last Thursday’s Red Sox game. “This thing still working for you?” “Yeah, it is.” “Planning on sleeping over next week?” “Yeah, a couple of nights.” And I made a joke about if he slept over more than three nights a week, he’d have to be an official boyfriend, and he was like, “We’re not quite there yet.”
And it was clear at the beginning that we were just dating, not monogamously. (The comment was, “we’re not boyfriends yet, of course we can see other guys.”) I do know, practically speaking, that neither one of us has been strictly monogamous, but because there was no expectation of monogamy, it’s not a problem for me that we weren’t.
For me it’s not critical that the relationship follow any set pattern, but it is critical that I know what he thinks the roadmap is and that he knows what I think the roadmap is.
Does that help?