[James]

Not to be cynical . . .

Its a cost benefit analysis.

You have to balance how unfulfilled you will feel, and for how long, with the eventual pay off.

After all, you could always just break it off with the person until you can be together again. That would be particulary apt for the "meant to be crowd."

Also, it depends on what you think "pay off" is. I wouldn't consider pay off to be marriage because there is no guarentee your marriage will be that good.

Basically, you will have to consider how good the relationship is right now, and then measure how long you will be have to be alone and see whether its worth it to have the same level of relationship you curently have.

Of course a lot of that is mitigated by how often you will see the person or the degree of attention you need.

As a side note: the longer people stay in a relationship the more likely they are to consider marriage in an attempt to "validate" the time and effort they put into the relationship.

I find that peculiar but true.