What It Means When You’re Incapable Of ‘Taking It Slow’ With Love

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“Let’s take it slow.”

A sentence that I have heard more times than I care to remember. I hate slow, I hate impatiently walking behind tediously slow people on the streets as they idly walk in front of me taking pathetic attempts at what resembles steps as I huff, puff and tut angrily behind them. I don’t have time to be slow, life is too short and time is running out.

I need certainty, I need stability, I need reinsurance and I need to know what I am letting myself in for before I fall madly and hopelessly in love with. Taking it ‘slow just prolongs the inevitable ending, so why make it harder? If something feels good, why put a ‘cock block’ (figuratively speaking) on my bubbling feelings?

That immense feeling of being in a new relationship. I just want to be around them all the time. I want to give them my heart on a platter as I feed them slices. But every time I give my all I’m told I’m coming on too strong, that I’m coming on too fast.

“Just take it slow,” they say, but what does ‘taking it slow’ actually mean? Do I have to put on hold my emotions that have been increasingly growing with time? Am I putting a sudden road block on potential love blossoming? And why do I associate ‘taking it slow’ with rejection and seemingly not being good enough for them? If they truly liked or even loved me surly they would want all of me, right?

Not making your significant other the centre of your universe seems to be the apparent message conveyed when referring to taking it ‘slow’ and in theory that makes perfect sense, however it is easier than done, especially when you have hordes of butterflies flying out of your throat each time a WhatsApp message pops up from them.

Everything about taking it slow actually makes sense, I get it. Check in consistently about how you truly feel. Yes, the love hormones are juicing things up, but how much do you really know this person? How many situations have you seen them in? Have you seen them mad? Extremely happy? Have you said “no” to them in a total 100% disagreement? How much can you lean on them? How honest can you really be with them? That’s what taking it slow is, you look at the facts of where things actually are, given that this is a more or less a brand new person in your life and so you are still treading the waters.

Now, that’s all well and good and it sounds all rather independently pleasing on paper, but what if you have already grown fond and attached to the significant other in question? Maybe I am just a maniac addicted to the rush and speed of love, but for me I just cannot slide casually along like a snail. A month into intense dating and hours and hours of kissing racked up in between gasps of air and now I am being told to ‘take it slow’? I’m sorry, but I do not control my hormones, my hormones control me, and right now they are telling me that I have intense feelings for you, I apologise for the inconvenience caused, why don’t I just put my nagging emotions into a jar until you are ready to catch up with me.

What will ‘taking it slow’ actually achieve? Artificially imposing slow-down rules isn’t a magical recipe for the relationship going forward in an ideal and problem-free manner. If I like you, I like you, if I have fallen for you, I have fallen for you, and it’s as simple as that. No stop signs, no limitations and no barricade on route to my heart. My emotions live life in the fast lane at 4,519 mph, I am the driver of my own heart and if I crash and burn and skid on the track than I take full reasonability for the actions of the driver behind the wheel.

My natural instinct is to Go! Go! Go! And to embrace everything that comes my way and give my significant other my all. My love is like a rollercoaster and there seems to be no way off this ride.