462 - Deepening Connections Through Slow Love
What is slow love?
Coined by Helen Fisher in 2016’s reissue Anatomy of Love, the term “slow love” is, according to Fisher, “...an extension of the pre-commitment stages of love.” Of course, this is a very mono-normative way of thinking, but we wanted to still examine the benefits and drawbacks of taking things slow.
As for what it means to take things slow, it could look like:
Taking time to get to know a person more “deeply” and engaging in a friendship first.
Physical milestones being reached gradually and not all at once, i.e. kissing, hand-holding, sex, and sleepovers.
Measuring out the amount of dates the two of you have, and integrating them into your life slowly.
Trying to balance out solo activities or activities with friends while also engaging in activities with a new partner.
Keeping texting pace more measured than it might be if NRE were guiding the relationship.
Taking everything one day at a time instead of getting too caught up in the future or “what could be.”
Relationship milestones being paced out more gradually, i.e. sex, sleepovers, introducing to family and friends, and beyond.
Some of the possible benefits of slow love are:
You can retain some of your personal autonomy, making sure that you have time for family and friends, as well as committing to your own hobbies and interests.
You can really get to know the person. Taking time in between dates can also help ease some of the effects of NRE. When you aren’t around the person constantly, it allows the hormones to subside a bit and gives you a clearer picture of who they really are.
Ditto on sex. Extremely good sex can make you think that your connection must also be phenomenal in every other arena. But making sure you get to know your partner in other ways, like how they communicate and what their goals and dreams are, can help you see if the two of you are actually a decent fit.
If you or they are getting out of a serious relationship, it allows time for reflection and care, so that similar patterns or bad habits are not repeated immediately in your budding relationship.
You and they can reflect on what it is that you even want in a relationship. We recommend doing the relationship anarchy smorgasbord with new partners to determine what it is that each of you want your partnership to look like.
Conversely, some potential drawbacks to slow love could be:
NRE is fun and great, and if you take it too slow, you might miss out on some of the benefits you get from being in that state like excitement and passion.
You may develop mismatched expectations for the state of the relationship. One of you may want to take it faster than the other. This could stifle the relationship or cause it to implode.
Arbitrary timelines may make the relationship feel less organic overall. If you decide that you have to wait a certain amount of dates for something specific to happen, it may make the relationship sputter out when it could have been moving forward.
Impatience and frustration may happen to one or both of you. Again, having mismatched ideas about how quickly the relationship should be moving can create challenges.
It can be difficult to control your emotional state as well as how quickly or slowly you fall for a person, so taking it slow may just not be feasible.
古臭い (furukusai), meaning stale or old-fashioned. Some partners or potential partners might feel as though taking it slow is old-fashioned and not want to do it.
Is slow love right for me?
If you’re thinking about trying to move a little bit slower in your next relationship, ask yourself these questions as a starting point to figure out if it might be something you’d benefit from:
Do you find that you tend to jump into relationships quickly without really getting to know a person?
Are you often surprised to find out red flags or deal breakers after the relationship has already progressed?
Do you tend to lose yourself in a relationship and neglect other parts of your life like your family, friends, and deeper interests?
Do people you are dating sometimes tell you that you are too intense or that they want you to slow down?
Have you just gotten out of a long term relationship and need some time before jumping into another one?
Are you polysaturated or have a lot of additional obligations that make rushing into a new relationship especially difficult?
Some actionable ways you can take it slowly in your next relationship if you decide that’s something you want to do are:
Do some thinking and plan ahead. What does taking it slow mean to you? Is it slow from a physical level, an emotional level, and/or when it comes to relationship milestones?
Make your intentions known. Let your new partner know early on what you need when it comes to your expectations about how quickly you want the relationship to progress.
Try not to indulge in unnecessary spending, especially early on in the relationship. This means refraining from lavish dates, plane tickets, big gifts, etc.
Ask them questions to get to really know them. Here is a nice list: https://www.bonobology.com/questions-ask-significant-other/ , or try this one from the NYTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/style/no-37-big-wedding-or-small.html
This includes big questions like, “What are your thoughts on monogamy and marriage?” and “What constitutes cheating?” and “Would you ever want an open relationship?”
Refrain from being controlling or possessive of the relationship. Allow them space and take time to enjoy your own hobbies and interests without them.
Don’t sign anything in the first year or make a huge commitment right away!
Make a plan for NRE. Martha Kauppi addresses this in episode 340.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we are talking about slow dating and slow love. We've discussed new relationship energy or NRE a lot on this show, and it's something that many of us go through every time we find a new partner. That head-in-the-clouds feeling may be excellent, but what happens when it all comes crashing down or when we overcommit ourselves? Is taking it slow the answer to NRE woes?
Today, we'll be discussing what slow love is, some benefits and pitfalls, and how to decide if taking it slow is right for you. If you're interested in learning more about our fundamental communication tools that we reference all the time on this show, you can check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers some of our most used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or wherever fine books are sold. Alternatively, you can check out the first nine episodes of this podcast, which also cover some of our most widely used and shared communication tools.
Emily: First off, I want to thank Damona Hoffman in episode 456 for discussing this slow love concept and even bringing it to my attention. I was not on that episode, but I got to edit it and therefore I got to hear all about it from her and have you guys talk about it a little bit. I was so intrigued that I wanted to devote an entire episode to it. I think right now when we are recording this, we're in the midst of breakup season. I know that I had a big breakup, which I'll be discussing in a later episode. Dedeker also broke up.
Dedeker: I had a break up too.
Emily: Yes, exactly.
Dedeker: We're so seasonal.
Emily: I know. Some of my big breakups have happened right around now, actually.
Dedeker: Most of my breakups have which I'm really embarrassed to say that it's so basic.
Emily: It's true.
Jase: So predictable.
Dedeker: For people who don't know, breakup season statistically, a lot of relationships end between New Year's Day and Valentine's Day.
Emily: Valentine's Day.
Dedeker: That's when it happens.
Emily: That's when both of ours did, so here we are. Because of this, some of us may be wanting to get back out there wanting to enter into new commitments or new relationships. We may have this urge to jump right into the next thing that you get excited about and fall head over heels for that person. While that can be fun and awesome, sometimes it may overwhelm us in a way that's maybe not as healthy as we would want our relationships to look like and to be.
I was intrigued to just talk about this, talk about this idea of taking it slow. Now, have the two of you ever really intentionally decided to take it slow in a relationship? Because I'm pretty sure I haven't, which shouldn't be very surprising to anyone. I think with the exception of when I just moved here and was dating a ton of people at once, and none of those relationships were really going to go much further than just hanging out and having sex and having a good time. My relationship milestones have gone pretty quickly when I've had long-term big relationships
Dedeker: Now, I appreciate you clarifying. Have I ever intentionally gone slow? Is the answer no? The answer might be no. I don't know. It is difficult now to specifically look through the lens of non-monogamy or through my own practice of polyamory. It's funny because back in the day when I was first exploring polyamory, I think it served as a relationship accelerator for me. Particularly because I think I really perceived, "Oh my God," no one's going to want to date me. Anytime I did find someone who was willing to date a polyamorous person and be like, "Oh my God, thank God this one person who's okay with me, great. Let's just all in with the investment and try to escalate as quickly as possible." In my later years, non-monogamy has, for me, I think has some more built-in natural obstacles that helps new connections to develop a little bit slower-
Emily: Interesting.
Dedeker: -in the sense of having partners that maybe take up more time. I think I'm also in a time in my life where I generally just have more stuff on my plate that I enjoy. There's more stuff in my life. There's less of a vacuum where it's like as soon as someone exciting comes along, it's like, "Yes, take up all this time and all this energy. Oh my God. I have it all for you." Now I think I have less of that and it's a little bit easier to want to go slow with somebody new, if that makes sense.
Jase: Yes, I had a few relationships that had a more slow start that was not intentional. It just happened circumstantially that way. More recently, just in the last few years, I have had a couple where, just because of where I'm at in my life, I entered them with this sense of I'm not really interested in rushing into something or overcommitting. I want to just take this slow and let's see, let's evaluate where we are. Both of those ended up becoming friendships, one of which is a very close friend now. Then the other is more of a friendly acquaintance that I might chat with occasionally. Neither one of those went from that slow thing into then a later a really committed romantic relationship. I do think that it means I get to have both those relationships still.
Just based on looking back at the past of similar situations like that where it's been exciting, I want to do a new thing, maybe I want to fill some gaps in my schedule, I want to have something exciting, I want to do something, I've really jumped in quickly and then later realized maybe more of a friendship-type relationship would've been better here, but it can be really hard to pull that back. That's only sometimes worked out. I do feel like I have some experience with that, but based on those, I'm like, "Yes, I would like to do this more in the future because my net overall game seems to be higher approaching it that way."
Emily: The internet has a lot to say on this subject.
Jase: Every subject
Emily: Of course, yes. In terms of it being a thing that people want to write articles about and also a thing that people like on Reddit want to talk about, yes, this is a great thing to do versus, no, this is a silly thing to do because it's putting arbitrary barriers on a relationship as opposed to letting it grow organically. That's the biggest thing. We'll talk about this more later, but the biggest thing that I see people being not into this idea of slow love is the idea that there are boundaries put up on the relationship, to begin with, that make it not go in a direction that it may have had those boundaries not been there in the first place. I don't know. I think that there are pros and cons to that and that's something that I definitely want to get into as we continue talking about this.
First, let's talk about where this term even came from. Now, the term slow love probably has been around for a while, but Helen Fisher is the one who says that she coined the term in her book Anatomy of Love. She was on a CBS morning show discussing what this is. She said and I quote, "Slow love is an extension of the pre-commitment stages of love. It began to occur to me that it's caution. These people want to know every single thing about a person before they tie the knot."
Then she basically said that this was because younger couples are terrified of divorce and want to make sure that they have a solid partnership before legally committing to one another. She said, "I began to think with this long pre-commitment stage, maybe you're learning a lot, you're getting rid of what you don't want so that by the time you walk down the aisle, you got what you want. You can keep what you want."
Dedeker: Now, what's fascinating to me though is it seems like from that quote--
Emily: There's a lot of fascinating things about this.
Dedeker: It seems from that quote that we are equating commitment with marriage specifically.
Emily: Yes, correct. That's a her thing, not an us thing.
Dedeker: Yes, that changes the focus of it a little bit, because yes, I would agree. I think that it is in the popular wisdom that it's better to spend at least a year or two dating each other, getting to know each other, building a relationship before choosing to get married, as opposed to getting married three months in, six months in, stuff like that. Now, when I think about the pre-commitment stage, of course, I tend to think about maybe non-traditional markers of commitment. I tend to think more about emotional entwinement, for instance, maybe where you're deciding to commit a particular amount of time, or energy or future planning to a particular partner.
Emily: I would have to agree with that, especially from a non-monogamous standpoint, but I think that commitment is going to mean something different for different people. Depending on whether or not you're just talking about dating, if you're dating to potentially find a mate to marry, or if you're just dating because you're interested in building a connection with a person, and that can look a variety of different ways.
Jase: I remember years ago, I was going through a breakup and having a hard time. I was talking to my mom about it. An observation she made, she was like, "I think it's okay to realize this is going to take you some time to get over because the way that you youngins," she didn't say that, but "the way that you young kids date now where you will often live together before getting married," she's like, "when you break up, it is like a little mini divorce. It is a lot bigger deal than it would be if you weren't that--
Emily: It's true. I can attest to that.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. If you weren't that entwined with each other, not only emotionally, but also financially and logistically, and all these other things. I think keeping that in mind, I think that-- I hate that Helen Fisher equates basically that marriage is the only goal of relationships and that their success or failure is based purely on whether you get married or not, or whatever. I hate that assumption. That's her whole thing. That's why I don't like to talk about her very much.
If we take that same concept though, and pull it back to like Dedeker was saying, not just emotional entanglement, but some kind of more logistical entwining of our lives, like moving in together or sharing a cell phone plan or adopting an animal or whatever it is. Usually living together is the common one people do. That if we think about slow love, meaning even before doing those sorts of things, I think that changes the conversation a little bit. There could be some people who are like, "Oh, yes, we moved in with each other after we were dating for a month, but we're doing slow love. We're not going to get married for five years or whatever." I'm like, "You're not being slow at all in any way."
Emily: Yes, true.
Jase: Let's just take the marriage part out, but I think the concept of what she's talking about makes sense, of looking at how much are we, I guess, slowing ourselves down before we jump to those sorts of decisions that are harder to extract from, I guess.
Emily: Because marriage for so many people does tend to be the goal that people do have, and it has been that way for a really long time, I did want to take a minute to just talk about some statistics in terms of the state of marriage at this point, and how we are taking it slow in the fashion that she was talking about in that quote. If we're looking at the statistics, since 1970, the marriage rate has dropped by 60%, according to a study by the National Center for Family and Marriage Research.
That's a lot. That's a lot, a lot and kind of interesting when you think about all your friends, and how many of them are married or not. Now, given we live in Seattle and Los Angeles, and maybe the results are going to be skewed based on where we're living, as opposed to somebody in the Midwest, they may have a lot of friends who are married and who have kids and stuff.
Dedeker: I did see, on the Overheard LA Instagram account, someone talking about this guy they had met who was 33. He's like, "You have to know, it's like North Carolina 33, so it means he has a wife and three children. Meanwhile, 33-year-old guys in LA are just learning how to cook a chicken breast."
Emily: Yes. 100%. Exactly. Maybe even higher here is what I'm saying in a place like Los Angeles, or New York, or Seattle, but in the broad spectrum of America, 60%, it is dropped by which is a ton.
Jase: That is interesting.
Emily: Also, the number of women entering their first marriage between the ages of 40 and 59 has jumped 75% since 1990. That's within all of our lifetimes. That's really interesting because I feel like people even before we were born, I don't know, four or five decades ago, were getting married in their 40s, that would be considered ancient.
Dedeker: Yes, it's funny. What I love about this is, I feel like I have some fuzzy memories of the '90s. Fuzzy memories of in the '80s and '90s, this scare statistic being tossed around that your chances of getting married after 40 were really, really slim. Again, more of this pressure, usually specifically on women about how you're going to be washed up and used up and so you got to bag someone while you're still young.
Emily: Oh, I had men telling me after my early 20s, I'd be used up and washed up.
Jase: Yes. Think of how many movies and books are based around the storyline of some woman worrying that she's too old. Of course, she's 30 or something in this or maybe 26 in the story, something like that. I love looking at this statistic and just that that's not the reality, that actually, the trend has been going this other way of like, "Yes, you don't need to be married." Not only is it not the only way to be happy, but also it's something you could do later if you want to.
Emily: Many, many more women today are also having children without being married. My mother was an early adopter of this one. I think that also means that people in general who are coupled even are having children without being married. They don't find the need to be in a legal entanglement necessary to have a kid, which I find really interesting and something again, that being born out of wedlock was not okay. Not okay, even in the '90s, I think.
Dedeker: I mean, there's still some pearl-clutching about that today, just less than there used to be.
Emily: Well, but yes, everything will calm down. In a study titled Courtship in the Digital Age, which had a sample of 3,000 married people in the US, researchers found that couples who dated for one to two years compared to those who dated for less than a year were 20% less likely to get a divorce. Then couples who dated for three years or longer were 39% less likely to part. Again, we should be courting for a longer period of time.
I feel like after a while, especially if you live together, if you get married, probably not that much is going to change. It's like, "Okay, now there was a legal entanglement that wasn't there before, but we've been doing this for a while. We know how it works."
Jase: I think it's worth noting the significant difference between up to two years, or the one to two years versus the three years and greater, how long you've been together. As we've talked about before with NRE, that just chemically your brain is different for anywhere from six months to a year and a half, is what they say. I do think it's like, yes, not only do you need time to go through the cycle of those brain chemicals changing, but also to go through enough stuff, I guess, to establish enough so that that getting married isn't that super jarring change and isn't that, "Oh my gosh, I had all these expectations about you, or I thought this would fix our problems and it didn't."
It's like if you've made it at least three years without just having marriage as the goal to get you through not having a good time, that you're more likely to then stay together. I just think that's really interesting.
Emily: Absolutely. I found on an NPR Morning Edition podcast that was discussing Americans' attitudes towards marriage and how they are rapidly changing. They had on a sociology professor named Susan Brown. She said, "The divorce rate in the United States has been slowly but steadily decreasing since it peaked in 1979, but we're seeing a tremendous drop in divorce among young adults in their 20s and through their 30s." This has to do in part with exactly what you're describing, that individuals are marrying at later ages these days. They're more mature, they're more economically secure, and this contributes to marital stability.
Interestingly, where we're seeing a rise in divorce is actually in the second half of life among people over the age of 50. We refer to this as gray divorce. Actually, 1 in 10 people getting divorced today is over the age of 65.
Dedeker: Wow. Interesting. Whole other phenomenon.
Jase: Wow. I hadn't heard that statistic.
Emily: I find that interesting too. That almost to me just feels like, "Okay. I have been with this person for a long time and I want to try something else," or, "I've realized perhaps there are other things out there in the world that I want to explore, or we've grown apart to some degree after a long period of time together. It could be a lot of different things, but the idea that divorce is just horrible and awful and horrifying, and so people just are going to stay together because that's easier than getting divorced at an older age. I think that maybe that has changed over time in terms of the way that people are looking at divorce and looking at the later years of their life.
Dedeker: Something that Damona Hoffman mentioned in that same interview was about how we are seeing many more people within this age demographic starting to use online dating and dating apps much more frequently. I think that probably contributes to it too, that if you're at a particular life stage where you're feeling like, "Well, I'm not thrilled with my partner, but I feel like dating at this age is going to be too difficult, so I guess I'll just tough it out," might be a little bit different if you have a perception of, "No, actually, I could leave the relationship that's not really serving me," and not just have to accept, "Oh, I guess I'll just be a single spinster for the rest of my life."
Emily: Yes, exactly.
Jase: Probably combine that with being a single person being less stigmatized. That maybe it just feels like, "Yes, ending this relationship is more of an option." Maybe that's all it takes for that, just to feel like, "Maybe this is an option for me." I want to take a quick break to talk about our amazing Patreon. We have some really great discussions that go on and relevant to this last topic here in our Discord that's just for Patreons. We actually have a channel that's specifically dedicated to people who are 40 and over because-
Emily: Sometimes the topics that
Jase: -we, I guess I'm in this category now, that we discuss are--
Dedeker: Emily and I are not yet allowed to go into that channel.
Jase: You're not now.
Dedeker: We are banned.
Jase: You are.
Dedeker: For sure.
Jase: You two are blocked from going to that channel. Anyway, it's just a really good example of how Discord lets us set up a lot of different channels for different topics that then people can find all sorts of different things to discuss. It's so active that I can't keep up with the whole server because people are just always having all sorts of different conversations, but there are certain channels that are always the ones that I'll check every day or every couple days to just see what the conversation is and join in. That's so cool. If you want to be part of that, you can go to our Patreon at patreon.com/multiamory. For becoming a Patreon there, you can do things like join our Discord group as well as we have video discussions and other things like that. It's a very cool community of people.
We're also going to take a moment to talk about a couple of our sponsors for this. They are the ones who make it possible for us to keep doing this show and putting this out there into the world for free for everybody in the world to listen to on their podcast machines. Please take a moment to check them out and if you use our promo codes or our links that we talk about and that are in the description, that does directly support our show and helps us to keep doing this. Thank you so much.
Dedeker: We are back. Let's start out by figuring out what does taking it slow actually mean because this does seem like it could be subjective, like you were pointing out, Jase-
Emily: For sure.
Dedeker: -someone could be, "Yes, it took us a whole six months before we moved in together." That could be someone's version of taking it slow. Or it could be, "I am going to space out our dates with six months in between," I don't know.
Jase: Could be.
Dedeker: This could be quite subjective is what I'm trying to say.
Jase: I think overall, the idea is that it's taking more time to get to know a person, especially getting to know them more deeply and engaging in-- I guess, getting to know them as a person. You could describe that as developing a friendship first. I think that sometimes saying develop a friendship first implies that means we're not being physically affectionate with each other. I don't think that's necessarily what people are talking about with slow love, although that might be for you.
I think the important thing to keep in mind here is it's about what this means for you. This could be those physical milestones like kissing, holding hands, sex, sleepovers, or it could be the amount of entwinement or the frequency that you see each other like that, but also relative to what you might have done in the past, could be another way to look at it. That it's slower than something else rather than, "Oh, well, if I wait X number of days, then it counts as slow love."
Emily: I feel like the milestone of sex is the thing that people wanted to discuss the most on Reddit.
Dedeker: Of course.
Jase: Sure.
Dedeker: That's what it's always been, right?
Emily: Absolutely. That question of like, okay, well, do you wait until the third date or do you wait until a month in or whatever to sleep with a person and people wanting a specific best practice in terms of you need to wait this long to have sex with someone. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. I would just take it by how you feel in our relationship, but sure if you put a specific time of "I'm not going to have sex with this person until this date or until this many dates," then yes, that's a way to take it slow.
Dedeker: It's a really difficult call to make because on the one hand-- Yes, again, I get how people can really have their feathers ruffled by this feeling like, ah, you're putting in some weird, arbitrary limitation on when something like kissing or sex happens. On the other hand, though, I know for sure I have slept with people where I was so full of hormones and attracted to them that I could not see the red flags that they were waving right up in my face. Sometimes I have wondered, maybe if I had cooled my jets a little bit, I could have seen some red flags and maybe avoided a not-very-pleasant dating situation, but that's hard to tell.
Emily: For sure.
Dedeker: I know I gave this extreme example of putting six months in between your dates, which it's not a terrible idea if that's what works for you and someone's down for that, but I suppose it could look that way because I've definitely been in a situation before. I've definitely known people who've been in the situation before where they go on a first date or maybe a second date and they get really excited about the person, and so then it's like, "Oh my God, when's the next free gap in my calendar?" Like, see them as soon as I can see them the next day and the next day and the next day.
That can be really thrilling and exciting and also intoxicating. When I use that word, I mean both the good and bad versions of intoxicated. Like when we think about being intoxicated on alcohol where it can be really fun and also very disorienting. It could be about really intentionally choosing to integrate someone into your life or into your daily life at a slower pace instead of trying to have them jump into whatever gap is there right away.
Maybe related to that, it could mean trying to balance out developing a new relationship with maintaining your alone time or maintaining the activities that you like to do solo or time that you spend with your friends, making sure that you're still maintaining the good things in your life and the good relationships in your life. Of course, that also means if you're non-monogamous, maintaining the relationships that you have as well, while also developing a new relationship.
Emily: Also, I find when I get into a new relationship that I want to text that person or keep, I guess, in contact with them a lot. If you're taking it slow, you may want to cool that a little bit too. You may want to be more measured in terms of the pace of the texting in contrast to how maybe you would feel if NRE was guiding that need and that response and the intensity of that. I know, again, it is this trope out there of, "Oh, don't talk to a person again or text a guy again for three days."
Dedeker: Don't double text. People are so scared of the double text as well.
Emily: Oh, yes, exactly. If the ball is in his court, then he has to be the one to text or don't text him after you've seen him for a date, make sure that he does it first or something like that. All of those arbitrary rules, I've heard it all out there. That's not necessarily what we're talking about. Although, I suppose if you want to do something like that, then that could be labeled as slow love. I think it's important to maybe take everything in a relationship one day at a time instead of really getting caught up in the headiness of, "This could be my future mate, this could be somebody that I really could see an exciting path forward with or future with. What can this relationship be 10 years from now?"
Instead of doing that, maybe just take it a little bit slower in that regard. Also, I think slow love, as we said, it just means that relationship milestones might be paced more gradually, which include things like sex and sleepovers, but also maybe introducing this person to family and friends and maybe a kid if you have a kid or if you're non-monogamous, introducing them to your other partners. Maybe slow love could include doing that at a later time and not immediately.
Dedeker: Sure. I wanted to give a quick shout-out to a somewhat older episode of ours, episode 190 that we did about surviving and thriving in NRE. Because that episode, we did much more of a deep dive into what's actually happening in your brain when you're going through NRE and why you feel this compulsion to text this person all the time, or to try to integrate them into your life as quickly as possible. I recommend folks go check out episode 190 if they want more specifics about that.
Jase: We've already talked about some of these, but we want to get into what are some of the benefits of taking it slow. I'd say the biggest one for me personally is that you get to retain some of your personal autonomy. This includes making sure that you still have time for your family and your friends as well as your own hobbies, or your interests, or your job, or your physical health, or cooking meals for yourself, whatever it is, that you're still spending time on those things.
I know that the times when I've looked back and been like, "Gosh, why was I so eager to rush into that?" Or, "Why did I spend so much time with this person early on?" Usually the thing that led me to regret that later is either that I just way overextended myself and then felt burned out and was like, "Please get away from me." Then that's an awkward situation to deal with, or it's that, "Oh, this happened to be during a slow time at work and now that it gets back to normal, I can't keep up that pace, but it feels like I need to. I've messed this up," or it's while a partner is out of town and now they're back, and now I have less time. It's like jumping into this, "I'll give every spare moment that I have," has been the number one thing that, for me, has gotten me in trouble more than entwining legally or moving in, stuff like that. I usually have been pretty good. Not always the best, but pretty good about waiting to not rush into those sorts of things.
The time commitment is the one that has always been the mistake that I've made. That's a benefit, is maintaining some of that autonomy. Also, you get to know the person. Taking time in between dates can help also ease some of that addictive quality of new relationship energy. If you're not spending such large blocks of time around that person, there's less of this huge comedown then when you're not with them that you're pacing that out. Allowing those hormones to subside a bit also helps you get a clearer picture like Dedeker was mentioning about not seeing red flags because you're just in all that chemical cocktail.
Then same with sex. Really good sex can make you feel like your connection is amazing in every area of the relationship. Having, again, some time to come down from that can help you see, "Oh, maybe we're not communicating that well in these other areas," or, "Maybe I actually don't like them in some of these other areas." That doesn't mean you don't get to have sex with this person, but it helps you evaluate more realistically. "Maybe I want to have a just sexual relationship with this person," right? It just lets you understand your options or maybe it's like, "Ooh, actually, this person is yucky to me. I actually don't want to be in this, even though, dang, I'm going to miss that really good sex." It helps you get that perspective and make better decisions.
Emily: This next benefit is for me and Dedeker and all of you out there who just went through a breakup. If you are getting out of a serious relationship, taking it slow could probably allow for reflection and some time on your part to really think about what it is that you want in a budding relationship and also maybe not continue the bad habits or patterns that may have caused the last relationship that you were in to go sour. You can also reflect on all of the things that it is that you want in a new relationship. You could do the relationship anarchy smorgasbord with a new partner as well to determine what it is that each of you want your partnership to look like.
Because I think so many of us get into relationships just thinking like, "Yes, they're going to want exactly the same things that I do." That simply may not be the case. Like Jase just said, maybe you find that a relationship that you have in a sexual sense is all that you really want that relationship to look like. Besides that, maybe it's not really going to go to more of an emotional place and having sex is totally okay, or maybe you don't want sex to be a part of that relationship and you just want it to be a platonic, wonderful friendship, or romance without the sex. If you want to learn more about the relationship anarchy smorgasbord, check out episode 339.
Dedeker: I like that clarity, to put on it, because I know something that happens for me is when I'm getting out of a relationship, every urge in my body when I think about entering into a new relationship, everything in me is overcorrect, swing the pendulum really far the other direction. That's just a particular lens that sometimes is not very helpful when you're dating. It's like if, for instance, maybe you're frustrated because this person you just got out of a relationship with was a bad texter and not very communicative, then you're like, "Oh my God, I need someone who texts all the time." Maybe you overcorrect for someone who maybe texts you a little too much or things of that nature. Yes, being able to cool your jets a little bit is helpful for sure.
Jase: Now something that we do need to discuss, because obviously, there are a lot of benefits that we've been going over, but what are some of the potential drawbacks to taking it slow? The first one that comes to mind is just that NRE, that new relationship cocktail of hormones is great. Maybe if you're taking it too slow and you're really putting a lot of extra rules on yourself about how to take it slow, you might miss out on some of that or not get to enjoy the positive feelings of that, and you're only just focused on limiting yourself, and you can miss out on that excitement and passion.
Also, I'd say related to that is that the other person is going to be feeling some of those excitement, hormones, and things for being with you, and you might have some mismatched expectations on the state of the relationship. It could be interpreted that you're just not that interested. They might want to take it faster than you, or it could be that you want to take it really fast and you're slowing yourself down, and they're like, "No, this is all I want. I'm just not that invested," that it might keep you from having some of those conversations if you're just focused on slowing it down but not really understanding where you're both at with how you're feeling about it. That could stifle the relationship or even just cause it to end entirely.
Emily: The big thing that people talked about on Reddit when they were discussing the cons of slow love or slow dating were these arbitrary timelines that are placed on a relationship and how it makes the relationship feel less organic overall. If you are deciding, "Okay, I need to make sure that I'm waiting a specific amount of time for a next date," for example, or, "I have to make sure that I have sex on the fifth date or after a month," that it may cause the relationship to sputter out when it could have potentially been moving forward.
Dedeker: Well, I feel like a theme here that I'm hearing is, how do you know when moving at a slow pace is really healthy versus when is it maybe being too self-protective?
Emily: I think that's a great question to ask.
Dedeker: Or maybe really trying to control something that is difficult to control. This is something I've chewed on for quite a while. I'm someone who I like to wait quite a while before saying I love you to someone.
Emily: Not me. I do it way too fast, probably, but yes.
Dedeker: Well, it's good that you know that.
Emily: I don't know about way too fast. I usually do it when I feel it, but it tends to be pretty damn fast.
Dedeker: That's the thing.
Emily: What's your timeline?
Dedeker: Okay. What I think is, I think it is very easy for me to say I love you to someone if I'm feeling NRE. Of course you feel like you love someone because they're great, they're divine. Your body is on a rocket ship through rainbow-colored clouds, and everything they do feels magical. Of course, it's really easy to feel love for that person. For me, I tend to at least want to wait until I've gotten a sense of maybe I've actually met the real person in the sense of I've seen maybe more of their flaws or we've gotten into some conflict. I've gotten to see how they handle conflict, either with me or with others.
For me, before I'm willing to express that, I want to wait. Not I'm waiting until the NRE is totally gone, but I want to wait until I see a little bit more of the actual person. I think that that has been helpful for me in the past. However, there have also been times where I've sometimes wondered, "Am I waiting for this person to prove themselves?"
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: They need to prove that they're worthy of me saying I love you. I think that's always been a tricky balancing act for me. Just to continue off of that same example, I've been in situations where someone has said that they love me and I haven't been ready to say it back. Sometimes people have handled that really well and sometimes people have not handled that really well.
Emily: Yes, for sure. I think that can happen in general, even with I love you or any other potential relationship milestone that may be happening or may not be happening because we're putting these slow love boundaries on something. I do think having those mismatched ideas about how quickly the relationship should progress can cause challenges. That is where honest and specific communication is really important.
Jase: I'm just remembering now, you talking about that, Dedeker.
Emily: Oh, shit.
Jase: I remember this being an awkward, weird thing in our relationship.
Dedeker: Was it? No, it wasn't, because I said I love you to you first.
Jase: It was like I'd been holding back from saying it for a while and I feel like we'd talked about how you like to hold back. I just remember it being-- It was exciting, I guess. We were doing an exciting dance. It just came back to me that that was a little bit of a thing that we had to try to figure out.
Emily: It took you guys a while, right?
Dedeker: I know how to do the forensics on this because I have a very particular memory-
Jase: Oh, okay.
Dedeker: -of a particular date. If we can dig through-
Jase: Reverse engineer.
Dedeker: -the trove of Google photos of when that particular date was, then we can put it to a specific moment in time, and then-
Jase: We'll do some research
Dedeker: -we'll come to a conclusion about whether that was fast or slow.
Emily: There you go.
Dedeker: Ultimately, really, it is about trying to control something that is really difficult to control, namely, your own emotional state as well as the other person's emotional state as well. It's impossible to control how quickly or slowly that you fall for somebody or that they fall for you. Someone may feel the urge to want to take it really fast with you before you're ready, or before you feel like you should.
Again, sometimes you can navigate that and sometimes that's going to cause friction. I think, another drawback to taking it slow. First of all, I want to welcome you all into the sometimes semi-reoccurring segment on Multiamory, which is Dedeker's Japanese Vocabulary Corner.
Emily: Oh, give it to me, baby.
Jase: Japanese vocabulary corner is a fun segment.
Dedeker: Yes. No one expects it in a non-monogamy and relationships podcast, but here we are. The Japanese have this great word, furukusai, which we would translate it as old-fashioned. What it literally translates to is, it stinks like old.
Emily: Oh.
Dedeker: I do think that there's a certain amount of all this taking it slow discourse, and I think the reason why it leaves a bad taste in some people's mouths is that it can feel like it's this old-fashioned thing, that it doesn't really speak to modern dating or feminism. I think this is something that has often been used like a cudgel on women in particular, punishing women if we perceive that they have moved too fast, or slut-shaming women if we perceive that they have moved too fast. I think that that may be a reaction that you can get from people also, if you're wanting to really take it slow, spread out your dates, that some people may say that you stink like old.
Jase: Gosh.
Emily: God forbid.
Jase: Yes, seriously. Oh gosh. All right. We're going to go on to how to ask yourself some questions to help evaluate your approach to slow love that might be best for you, as well as some things that you can actually do to avoid as many of these pitfalls as possible while getting the most benefit. We're going to take another quick break to talk about supporting this show.
However, if you are a patreon at the $7 level or above, we actually have a RSS feed where we have these episodes without any ad breaks in them. You can go check those out. If you don't want to have ads, you can support the show directly. For those of you who want to listen to this for free, we love that too. Just take a moment to check out the sponsors. They're companies that are willing to support a show like this, which actually not a lot of companies will even do or even put their ads on shows that talk frankly about things like sex. We really appreciate our sponsors on this show. Check them out, use our promo codes and our links, because that's how you can directly help support our show.
Emily: All righty. We are back and want to talk about how do you know if taking it slow is right for you? Then if you decide, "Yes, it is. I'm going to do that," how do you even implement it the next time you date someone or the next time you get into a relationship? First, I want you all out there to maybe get out a journal or just even think about these questions, maybe stop after I say each one and really reflect and think about them.
Jase: I love this. I love journaling exercises.
Emily: I know you do. I know. Ask yourself these questions. First, do you find that you tend to jump into relationships quickly without really getting to know a person? Maybe there's a lot of red flags in your past relationship, like Dedeker talked about, and you tend to just breeze past them and then that bites you in the ass after a while. Think about that one. Next, are you often surprised to find out red flags or deal breakers after the relationship has already progressed?
I think NRE so often causes us to just look past that for a long period of time, I would find. Maybe like a year in or sometimes longer even, you see these recurring patterns that you realize, "Yikes. I really should have seen that earlier," or, "I really maybe wouldn't have progressed with this person had I been honest with myself about those things earlier."
Jase: Even just would have put things in place earlier to try to stop those patterns before they became entrenched and now they're a lot harder to deal with.
Emily: Totally. Do you tend to lose yourself in relationships and neglect other parts of your life, like your family or your friends and your deeper interests? This is a huge thing that so many people do in relationships. I have absolutely been guilty of this. I don't know anyone probably who hasn't, maybe some people are really amazing about this boundary, but if you find that that's something that you tend to do in your relationships when you're starting out, maybe think about taking it a little slower.
Do people you're dating sometimes tell you that you're too intense or they want you to slow down? Been there, done that too. Yikes. That's not always the case that that's a you problem. It might be a them problem. It is interesting to at least reflect on and ask yourself, "Am I a little too intense? Am I going a little too hard on this person and am I a little bit too excited and that's causing people to feel as though, "Hey, maybe we do need to slow it down or maybe we shouldn't jump into seeing each other five times a week after the second date"?"
Jase: I actually want to add a sub-question to this one, and that's, have you noticed any trends where you've gotten into a relationship very quickly and afterward realized that your friends had been suggesting maybe you pump the brakes but you couldn't even hear them until after it was over and then you realize, or you did hear them and you just ignored them? The same idea of getting a little bit of outside reflection of, "Oh, yes, maybe I did just steamroll through this without really paying attention to some signals I was getting from people."
Emily: Absolutely. This is a big one here, this next one. Have you just gotten out of a long-term relationship and maybe need some time before jumping into another one? Now, I am guilty of not doing this one, but I do think that the pain of being alone or the pain of ending a long-term relationship is so intense sometimes that we just want to get into a new commitment really quickly. That can cause us to again not take the time to think about what it is that we want and what it is that we need and how we're going to make the next relationship better than what just ended, for instance.
Pump the brakes on yourself and maybe take it slow in terms of getting into another really intense entanglement immediately after ending something that was really big and meaningful in your life. Finally, let's look at those outside commitments. Are you polysaturated or do you have a lot of additional obligations that make rushing into a new relationship especially difficult right now? That's something that I think many of us underestimate or rather overestimate the amount of time that we think that we have. We're like, "Yes, I can add another person or I can start dating again or I can add a new relationship to my life when I'm trying to get a PhD."
Sometimes that's not feasible. That's not realistic and you really can't maybe devote as much time to a relationship as you may want to, and that might be a really good reason for slow love or slow dating to happen in your life, just simply because you can't devote all your time and energy to a new relationship. That's totally okay, but that's something to talk about in the next relationship that you get into.
Jase: Now, at the end here, let's look at some actionable ways that you can take it slow in your next relationship or maybe you're just starting one right now, to take a look at what are some ways that we can do this to maximize the benefits and minimize some of those pitfalls we've talked about. The first thing is to do some thinking and planning ahead. By listening to this episode, you're already on your way to that step, so good for you.
The questions to ask here are things like what does taking it slow mean to you? Is it more about physical connection? Is it more about emotional or is it more about certain relationship milestones? I think the important thing to think about here is, the point of this is not to find some magic number of days or some magic speed that just is the right speed. I know we all wish there were just answers of, "Oh, if you just do this many days then you're good," or, "If you just don't text first then you're good," or whatever it is. We want the easy answers.
The truth is you need to look at yourself. What are the trends I've noticed? You might be listening to this and thinking, "Oh, I'm already crushing it at slow love because I'm very stand-off-ish and I don't let people get close to me." This might not be the episode for you. This might not be the episode for you. I don't mean that as any kind of criticism because I think we've made a lot of criticisms of ourselves being too fast in the past, but it's just looking at yourself and going, "Yes, have I been too fast, or am I not? Maybe I can speed it up a little bit, but just keep in mind, I'm still being intentional about getting to know this person and building a connection, not just rushing into things," to help you find that middle ground.
I think to go to the rules thing, the whole wait three days or only have one date per week or some kind of arbitrary rule, I don't like them as general rules for everyone, but they can be helpful for yourself, especially if you can back it up with, "Okay, I had this relationship, and it actually was pretty nice the way we built it up because logistically we were only able to see each other this often."
Then this other one, I really rushed into it, and I tend to just-- every night you can come over and spend the night. I've definitely been guilty of that one. It's like, "Well, I don't have a good reason to say no, so sure, yes, let's do that. It's nice. Sex is good, whatever." Having an arbitrary rule for yourself just for the sake of giving you something to gauge your speed against, can be really helpful. Just keep in mind that it's there to serve you, not the other way around. It's not some absolute hard and fast, this is the right answer, but just find something that works for you.
Then also communicate. Make your intentions known to the other person. Let them know early on about your expectations or things like that to avoid those situations where they think it means you're not interested. Just be communicative, be honest about what's going on. I would say also try to make sure it's about emotionally what you want and how you want to care for yourself and not, "Oh, sorry, I have this rule that X." I just think that then leads to that feeling of, "Oh, well, this isn't organic or natural or whatever, it's just following these rules."
To go a different direction, one thing you can look at is avoiding unnecessary spending of money early on in the relationship. This could refer to the love bomby sorts of giving tons of gifts and lavish dates and things like that that aren't coming from anywhere bad, but are being motivated by all these chemicals. You want to spend more money to get more of those chemicals. Again, can set up an expectation that you can't really maintain or even hurt yourself financially that's then going to hurt you longer-term in this relationship.
Dedeker: I think it's a good idea to put in the effort to really get to know somebody emotionally. I don't know, is it better to do that before you get to know them physically? If you're someone who enjoys having sex in your relationships, is it better to wait before that? That's all very personal. There's definitely some people, and some people who identify as demisexual, who really want to take a lot of time to get to know someone emotionally first before having sex.
I really enjoy, in particular, The New York Times 36 questions to fall in love. It's a really, really fascinating list of questions that get progressively a little bit more vulnerable as you go along. You don't have to sit down and do all 36 with one person in one session. Even if you look at this list and you're like, "Oh, this is actually a really interesting question," you could just bring that to your next date with somebody as a conversation prompt, essentially, because it's going to help give you some clues about really who they are on the inside. There's also this list that we pulled from Bonobology. That's the one that works better on paper.
Emily: Bonobiology.
Dedeker: Bonobology. Anyway, if you search that term, however you think that it's spelled, and search for 50 questions to ask your significant other to know them better, this is also a really great list of questions because in particular, they include questions like, what are your thoughts on monogamy and marriage? Or what constitutes cheating? Or would you ever want an open relationship? Of course, you need to figure out what kind of connection am I wanting to build with this person? Which questions are actually appropriate to ask here? These are all fantastic questions to ask before you get into the super deep entangled committed phase with somebody.
EmilyEmily: A best practice to take it slow in your next relationship or just in general, is to refrain from being controlling or possessive of the relationship. That means allow your significant other space and take time to enjoy your own hobbies and interests without them. Even if you have been married to this person for a long time or have been in a relationship for a long time, you're not entitled to anybody's time. That's something to really remember as you're getting excited about someone new in your life.
Just because you're excited about them or just because you're in a relationship with them doesn't mean that you're entitled to their time and to their energy. Don't take it for granted, but also don't be possessive of them. Oh boy, don't sign anything in the first year or make a huge commitment right away. You heard the statistics at the beginning of this in terms of marriage, that people who get married after less than a year, they're much, much more likely to get divorced. Similarly, I think if you enter into getting an apartment with someone after just a short period of time, you're probably much more likely to not know the things about them that you want to in order to get into that kind of entanglement with them.
Jase: I have one little add-on to this one, and that's something I've seen couples do where they say, "We're not going to do this thing until we've been together a year," but they start planning for that thing like three months in.
Emily: That's true.
Dedeker: Like getting an apartment together or whatever.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Right. They're already looking for it together. They're already making plans for it. I feel like that actually-- at least what I've just noticed observationally with people doing that, that they get themself into the same problem because they've mentally committed to it and they're following through because they've committed to it, rather than actually giving it that year to just focus on building this relationship before we're even really considering those sorts of steps. That's just, I'd say, the second level to that one that I've started noticing more and more recently.
Dedeker: Lastly, I want to give a shout out. I think I've talked about this on the show before, but Martha Kauppi, who we interviewed, our first interview with her was back in episode 340 talking about polyamory and therapy. Martha Kauppi wrote this great book called Polyamory: A Clinical Toolkit for Therapists and Their Clients. She has this specific exercise that I really love sending to my clients that's called How I Plan to Handle New Relationship Energy. I think that if you're someone who tends to struggle with NRE or struggle with moving too fast or becoming polysaturated really fast or taking on new relationships when you're already polysaturated, I think this is a fantastic exercise.
It's basically a series of writing prompts that includes things like, this is the kind of person that I aspire to be, or these are the people that I really want to make sure that I stay connected to, or these are the fun things that I love to do alone, or, I think the real kicker, this is how I want my partners to feel about me, and this is how I want my partners to feel about our polyamorous relationship, and these are the things that I want to do to help elicit those feelings in them, that, again, I think can help give you a little bit of a reality check about, seriously, who it is that you want to be, even when you're a little bit drunk on brain chemicals, can help give you something to ground to in the midst of this. Some of that grounding could help you to move a little bit slower.
Emily: We didn't talk at all about the fact that taking it slow could also help keep your existing relationships, if you're non-monogamous, more understanding of the potential excitement that you're going through, and also enable you to be really present with them still, even though you may be really excited about a new relationship, but it allows the time and the care to step back from all the intensity of the hormones that you may be feeling and get to relish the old relationship energy as well, and the love that you already have for people in your life.
Dedeker: I've never ever, ever heard anybody complain that their partner is moving too slow in another relationship.
Emily: Well, sure.
Dedeker: I've never heard anybody be like, "God, they're just taking forever to go to the next base with this person or to entangle, I don't get what their deal is." I've never heard that complaint.
Emily: That's true.
Dedeker: The complaint I hear all the freaking time is, "Oh my God, my partner is moving so fast in this new relationship, and it's like my head is spinning and these milestones are happening so quickly and I don't even know. Everything is all topsy-turvy and all these things are changing." That's not to say that you should let your partner 100% dictate how fast you move in a relationship, but just bear in mind that that's a factor for sure.