If you’ve found that your relationships develop at a romantic comedy pace, starting out intensely (or dragging along at a snail’s pace) only to fall apart messily, this article and the two that follow are for you. We’re talking all about how pacing can help you find a love that lasts.
Prefer to listen to this information? Tune into episode 4 of I Love You, Too.
In dating, pacing refers to intentionally adjusting the speed at which you move through the different stages of a relationship.
We think pacing is an underrepresented topic in the dating advice-o-sphere. Finding a comfortable, security-boosting pace can make a pivotal difference when it comes to building healthy, long-term relationships, yet very few people are actually talking about it.
The questions we're gonna answer in this series include:
What is pacing in dating?
Why should you pace your romantic relationships?
How can you pace the development of a new relationship for long-term success?
What are the signs that pacing is off in a new relationship?
What if your pacing doesn't match your partner's pacing?
What is pacing in dating?
Ok, so what is pacing in dating?
Pacing is mindfully adjusting the rate at which you’re bonding with and committing to a partner.
You can think of pacing as the Be Here Now of dating. It’s the practice of being present to and accepting of the reality of your connection with your potential mate.
Intentionally adjusting the pacing of dating to reflect your needs and a relationship's true stage of development increases your chances of building a healthy, long-term connection.
Pacing means you’re in touch with the relationship’s developmental phase and calibrating the time spent with your partner to match reality.
Dating that isn’t paced might include first dates that last 12 hours (because you just clicked so well!) or inviting your new sweetie to join you on an international trip three weeks after your first date (because it just feels so right!). Or, on the flip side, dating for months but avoiding “putting a label on it.” Or, keeping your love life compartmentalized, e.g. not introducing partners to friends or family.
Pacing enables you to work skillfully with the “addiction” of love.
Thanks to research by Helen Fisher, anthropologist and head science advisor at Match.com, we know that the same brain regions that are involved in addiction light up when we are in love. Lots of yummy chemicals flood our systems — dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, estrogen, oxytocin, etc. — and we can’t eat or sleep or think clearly. We’re, in essence, high on our Beloved.
Fisher refers to love as a “positive addiction,” as love in its healthiest form is nourishing and happiness-boosting. I agree, with one caveat — it will only be a positive addiction if you’re partnered with someone who can build a secure functioning relationship with you. I believe pacing is one of the best ways to increase your chances of getting “hooked” on someone who’s actually a good fit.
Pacing means adjusting the frequency and kinds of bonding activities with your potential mate so that you don’t fall prey to the old saying, “love is blind.”
It means that you say “yes” to spending time together and deepening your intimacy, but also carve out the time and space needed to come back down to earth so that you can clearly assess the quality of the relationship.
On a physiological level, our lust chemicals reduce by about a year into a relationship. For example, it takes about a year for men's testosterone levels to stabilize back to the level they were at before meeting their partner. For that reason, you might want to wait at least a year to get engaged so that you’re confident you’re making the decision to spend your lives together based on actual compatibility, not the “urge to merge.”
Pacing is about finding balance.
In pacing dating for long-term success, your goal is to stimulate enough of those yummy brain chemicals to bond with your partner, but not so much that you lose yourself and your good judgment.
While you don’t want to be so consumed with your newfound love object that you're not thinking clearly, you also don’t want to shut down your desire or sabotage the bonding process. Limerence (the “falling head over heels” stage of all-consuming lust and desire) is an important part of relationship-building. It’s also fun! Pleasure is a vital element to creating a deep bond with another human being, so it’s important to allow yourself to enjoy falling for your sweetie.
Also, note that pacing is different for each person. For some, it means slowing down. For others, it means leaning in and allowing themselves to go a little bit faster than they might typically. For most, it means dancing between the two at varying times depending on the circumstances.
Why should you pace your romantic relationships?
Without pacing, we are at risk of attaching to a person who won’t ultimately be a good fit for us. Or not attaching to someone who would be a good fit!
Pacing in dating is a way to shepherd your nervous system through a naturally stimulating process so that you have the clarity of mind needed to make good decisions.
Without it, we’re at risk of skipping over vital early developmental tasks, thereby failing to form a solid foundation upon which our relationship can flourish through the ups and downs of long-term love.
Imagine you’re a few weeks into a new relationship and your partner reaches out to you to see if you’d like to spend the weekend together. You’ve been looking forward to a weekend by yourself so that you can rest and reflect on the relationship. You also worry that saying no will hurt their feelings and push them away.
Without knowing the importance of pacing, you might ignore your pull towards alone time and join your partner for the weekend. While avoiding stating your needs may save you discomfort in the short term, there’s a good chance it’ll make your life harder in the long run. That’s because you won’t gather important information about your partner and relationship. Stating your desires clearly will give you an opportunity to:
Collaborate and compromise with your partner, thereby building a sense of trust that you can navigate differing needs and desires.
Step away so that you can clearly assess the quality of your growing relationship.
See how your partner responds to your boundaries and need for space.
Pacing can help you determine whether your love interest is a Relationship Master or Disaster.
Pacing can give you key information about your love interest’s capacity to respond to your needs with care and compassion. Or whether they’re, as renowned couples therapists and researchers John and Julie Gottman say, Relationship Masters or Disasters.
If you are listening to your own pacing and communicating it even when it doesn’t match what the other person wants, you will get feedback very, very quickly if they are unable to flex and respect your boundaries.
When you slow things down or ask for more connection, notice how they respond. Are they caring and kind? Critical, cold, or punishing? Do they subtly or overtly violate your boundaries? Or do they respect them and by extension you?
Pacing is especially helpful for avoiding relationships with the deeply hurt humans in the dating pool who relate in harmful ways, be they full-blown narcissists or just wounded people who have yet to go to therapy. By clearly communicating your needs and observing others’ responses, you’ll get great information about their capacity and character.
Pacing allows you to use dating to heal relational traumas.
As attachment-oriented creatures, human beings are wired to seek intimacy. Since our nervous systems perceive romantic partnership in the same category as food, water, and shelter, dating can feel high stakes, particularly if we’ve experienced difficulties in past relationships.
Ann Lamott once said, “Getting into a new relationship is like pouring Miracle-Gro on your character defects.”
Put another way, when we do the courageous thing of opening our hearts to another human being (i.e. dating), our unresolved relational traumas rise to the surface for healing.
Most singles don’t have the tools or practices needed to address the emotional wounds that get reopened in the dating process. Perhaps you, too, tend to date on autopilot, reacting rather than responding.
Your pacing may reflect this trauma-based form of dating. You may tend towards deepening your relationships at a snail’s or cheetah’s pace out of self-protection or comfort.
Like this:
If I just keep things casual, I won’t have to be tied down and risk being in a relationship that makes me miserable.
Or:
Let’s be honest — most people leave me. And it feels so good being with this person, so I’m just going to spend as much time with them as possible! At the very least I’ll get to enjoy it while it lasts (which it probably won’t).
When you pace dating intentionally, you have a greater opportunity to stay present with what arises in the process of opening your heart to another human being.
Let’s take Magellan as an example, who grew up with an emotionally distant single mother who highly valued self-reliance. As a result, Magellan developed an avoidant attachment style, meaning they form fewer close relationships than more securely attached people due to their fear of dependency.
Magellan’s nervous system has learned to associate relationships with a loss of autonomy. For that reason, getting too intimate with another person triggers their threat response. They manage this by keeping others at a distance, i.e. avoiding dating or exiting relationships when they get “too serious.”
On autopilot and without the magic of pacing, Magellan tends to wait a week before following up after a date, even if they’re really interested in the person.
Magellan’s unconscious avoidance patterns also manifest as failing to respond to their love interest’s texts, avoiding intimacy-enhancing activities like meeting one another’s friends or sharing vulnerably, and responding to status of the relationship conversations with comments like “I don’t really do labels.”
In spite of generally living by the principle I’m happy on my own, I don’t really need others, Magellan longs to build a family. They hire me as their dating therapist so that they can get to the root of their commitment phobia.
As we review pacing, Magellan realizes that their tendencies towards distancing stop them from dealing with the fears of dependency that they inherited from their mother. Together, we determine that pacing their dating life includes shortening the time between dates and follow-up texts and sharing at least one vulnerable thing about themselves on each date.
As Magellan accepts the challenge of pacing, they use the process outlined in our Dating is Hard episode. They utilize self-soothing and integration in response to the emotions that get triggered as they take the risk of getting closer to their love interests.
Pacing stops you from defaulting to the usual and activates the old hurts and fears that want to be healed. While not always pleasant, this is helpful — it allows you to see what gets in your way when it comes to building genuine intimacy. And it does so in a contained, conscious way; the right pacing means that you have the time, space, and clarity of mind to bring your thoughts and feelings to your therapist, a friend, or your journal.
As a reminder, pacing is about balance. The point is to find a pace that’s a stretch but not a strain, one that puts us in the zone of proximal development where we have enough challenge and comfort to make the process growthful. If Magellan attempted to go from lots of avoidance tactics to diving in with both feet, chances are they would get overwhelmed and their defenses would go into overdrive. In other words, their avoidant tendencies would return with a vengeance (hello, ghosting!).
Pacing means Magellan takes baby steps towards shifting their typical patterns, which in turn creates the conditions for stimulating some but not too much fear. That way they process a tolerable amount of residual trauma material rather than becoming overwhelmed.
TLDR: Intentionally pacing dating can help you find lasting love.
Pacing dating means mindfully adjusting the rate at which you’re bonding with and committing to a partner so that you can work skillfully with the “addiction” of love.
Pacing is about finding the sweet spot of closeness/distance and challenge/soothing so that you can remain clear-sighted while searching for your person.
Without pacing, we are at risk of attaching to a person who won’t ultimately be a good fit for us. Or not attaching to someone who would be a good fit!
Pacing can help you determine whether your love interest is a Relationship Master or Disaster. It can also help you heal past relational traumas.
Hungry for more? Read parts 2 and 3 of this three-part series, where you’ll learn how to pace the development of a new relationship for long-term success:
