Are we there yet?

For as many relationships as I've had, you'd think that I'd know when I'm in one. Sadly enough this is not the case. Most of my ex boyfriends have played it high school style and straight up said "do you want to be my girlfriend?" EW. Hate that. So immature. This happened in all but one relationship where pretty much we just hooked up until we had a two minute convo that went something like:

Him: Are you hooking up with other people?
Me: No, are you?
Him: No.. so we're exclusive then?
Me: I guess, yeah.
Him: Aw, I have such a cute girlfriend

Which is also lame and vomlicious, but less so then the other fucks. Needless to say at this point in my relationship with hotdoc I'm confused. He's definitely brought up being exclusive and I told him I need to be single... but we're hanging out everyday and obviously not hooking up with other people, and now I've pretty much gotten over myself and decided I don't want to be single anymore, I just like him too much! (Whoops... that didn't last very long! < 1 Month, No bueno!) At a certain age... oh say 28... do boys just sort of assume there's a relationship or does one still need to be established? Is it my turn to bring up the discussion since he already tried and failed?

I have a few friends that are seeing boys, (for debates sake in this post "dating will be bf/gf" and "seeing" will be going on dates/being wined and dined) and I think the same goes for them. How many dates do you need to go on, how many sleepovers do you have to have (all while remaining exclusive) before it's considered a relationship??? Mind you this is all assuming the two folks involved in this relationship aren't having The Talk, you know, the "do you want to be my gf" talk. I don't even know what I would want the talk to sound like a this point in my life, if I hate the high school way so much. I guess I'd like to avoid it all together and just assume after we've established exclusivity that it's essentially dating.

Thoughts?