The Wisdom of Taking It Slowly

It sounds, on the surface, like the most withholding and mean-minded of strategies: to go very slowly when we might, at some level, want to go very fast indeed. To say, ‘perhaps we might meet again in a couple of weeks,’ rather than ‘are you free tomorrow?’; to let at least four meetings pass before we hold out a hand; to assume that we can’t, for a long while, really know who has come into our lives – and so not to introduce them to friends, not to get into a regular rhythm over text and not to mention love until it’s almost a different season.

Such self-possession might sound denying and sad. Why such miserliness? Modernity was supposed to have liberated us from decorum. We were supposed to have let go of the rigmaroles of propriety for the untrammelled callings of our hearts.

But slowness does not necessarily have anything to do with prudishness or social mores; it can be where we land once we’ve built up a more profound understanding of the psychology of love. Whatever we may tell ourselves, love is far from being simply all we humans want. However heady and beautiful it might appear from a distance, it is something that may ­– in actuality – terrify us as much as it delights us; something we’re as much tempted to flee as to embrace.

Caution is therefore logical. To stand helpless and vulnerable before another human, to hope that they will see us as we are and still care for us, opens us up to a genuine and uncommon risk of devastation. If heartbreak can kill us (and it more or less can), no wonder if we should – at least in part ­– begin with modest steps.

To the general terror, some of us have backgrounds that add another particularly intense layer of fear. We may have grown up in disturbed environments where the first rule of love was that it was scarce and unpredictably distributed. In our youngest years, we may have had to acclimatise ourselves to a very uneven supply of affection. Perhaps Mother was unavailable and Father was violent. There might have been a lot of sarcasm and not much patience for our sorrows or opinions. And therefore, the only way to survive would have been to withdraw, to learn to play alone – and to make our peace with a restricted emotional diet.

So when someone arrives in adulthood promising us a banquet – when someone lays out dish after dish of generosity and care, when someone promises us unlimited kindness and tenderness – our first response may not be joy but nausea; not delight but panic. We may be unable to absorb or metabolise any of the rich nutrients before us and, without quite knowing why, in order to maintain our poise, may have no option but to turn on our kind hosts, blame them for being weak or odd  – and run away. We might wish to tell them: please be so kind as not to be too kind. Please be generous enough not to overwhelm me. Please let me find my own way to reciprocation.

On the other side of the ledger, we – the so-called generous ones, the banquet-givers who like to move fast – should also be brave enough to question our behaviour. It may look as if we’re being purely and simply ‘romantic’ (Paris on the second date! Nicknames after a week!), but we may turn out to be – beneath our bold gestures –  something rather more complicated and sad: untenably and unhelpfully anxious. We lose our minds if we haven’t heard from them in two hours. We can’t bear not to know their intentions before the arrival of desert. We are giving a lot not so much because we want to, but because we have no confidence in ourselves as people with a solid claim to affection. We are running to stay one step ahead of self-disgust. We are moving at lightning speed because our childhoods have taught us that love may disappear at any time, that nothing is solid, that we aren’t worthy, and that the best way to prevent loss is to make outsized efforts, to lose ourselves in displays of devotion, and to prompt our beloved to say ‘yes’ before either of us know who the other might be.

Mature love, by contrast, sits – boringly but beautifully – in a middle zone between frightened rush on the one hand and equally frightened withholding on the other. Its hallmarks are confidence, calm and self-possession. Its essence is patience. The healthy lover has the wherewithal to think: I like them, but I don’t yet know them. I want them to stay around, but I could bear to live without them. I’m attracted to them, but I have no need to act on my desires. There will be time…

It may sound clever, but it’s in truth usually something far more automatic and instinctive: the legacy of a reliable loving upbringing. For those of us who haven’t benefited from such a gift (and there is no greater), we can nevertheless make a conscious effort to slow down our trepidations and our extravagances. Our attitudes to love can gradually become imbued with ease, serenity and self-compassion. We can grow more certain that we will find someone, here or elsewhere, because we have much to offer. We can survive rejection. We can afford to delay and explore. We can take as much time as we need, paying constant and close attention to how comfortable we feel, avoiding any embarrassment at being uncertain by communicating our hesitations honestly – so that eventually, one day, when it finally feels right, we can take a thoughtful risk and reach out for their hand, knowing that we will be able to survive whatever follows.