Lately, I’ve been learning a lot about pacing in a relationship. In the past, I didn’t pay much attention to how certain activities either sped up or slowed down a relationship. Nor did I really think about what that meant. This led to me, unintentionally, sending mixed signals to previous dating partners. I didn’t think about the fact that the romance level of a date, along with its timing, could indicate a desire to advance the relationship (or the opposite). Even after I started to become aware of relationship pacing, I ended up going the opposite direction and being too concerned about it. I often waited for several days to message someone even though I wanted to message them sooner simply because I didn’t want to impact the pacing of the relationship. I became self-conscious about the fact that my actions could indicate a desire to advance things at a pace faster than I was comfortable. Other times, I felt as if I was supposed to slow things down or speed them up because of how long the relationship had been going on.

I’m learning now that relationships don’t have one speed that they’re “supposed” to go at. When I’m being honest with what I want is when my relationships go at the pace that I’m most comfortable. Trying to arbitrarily force things to go at a certain speed only ends up with greater anxiety. I’ve also learned that advancing a relationship and deepening a relationship are two different things. One is about your relationship’s status and the other is about how well you know your partner. I’ve come to value deepening a relationship more than I have accelerating it. And I think that in the past I had conflated the two. I believe that in order to get to know someone, I needed to advance the relationship. In truth, to get to know someone, I had to be honest with myself about what I wanted and start trying to get to know the other person. People only volunteer part of themselves without prompting. By revealing ourselves and then inviting our partner to do the same, we can achieve greater mutual understanding. At least, I think so. I’m still learning. But it feels better than it did before, so that’s okay.