The Paradox of Slow Love
“They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love. It would be difficult to say which had seen the highest perfection in the other, or which had been the happiest: she, in receiving his declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted.”
So begins Jane Austen’s final completed novel, Persuasion—and perhaps no two sentences describe as succinctly the traditional romantic ideal of falling in love. Rapid and deep, true love, for Austen, leaves no room for doubt; once it is declared, lifelong commitment—barring intervention by ill fortune or meddlesome relatives—will surely follow quickly on its heels.
Many today would recognize the appeal of such a picture, however skeptical they might be about the likelihood of this fantasy coming to life. The way we actually date, though, could hardly be more different. Today, love takes time. When looking for a soul mate, people no longer rely on blind dates or chance encounters. They cast a wider net than ever before—dating across great geographical divides—and test the waters for long periods over text and videochat before meeting in person. They vet partners for financial stability and compatible interests. They have less sex than previous generations. Every stage of the relationship is drawn out: They wait longer to become “official” or exclusive, to move in together, to introduce their partners to their families, to marry and have children. In a 2016 reissue of her book Anatomy of Love, Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist at the Kinsey Institute who has served as an adviser for the dating site Match for more than 15 years, gave these new, extended courtship practices a pithy name: “slow love.”
[Read: The type of love that makes people happiest]
Relationship experts, Fisher among them, have watched with eager fascination to see what effects the pandemic would have on our romantic lives. Anecdotal evidence, as well as the results—which samples 5,000 demographically representative individuals—suggests that the pandemic has caused dating to decelerate further. Hesitant about meeting in person, people have been spending more time texting and videochatting before meeting, and even when they move to in-person dates, they have been holding off on physical contact for longer. Relationship goals have shifted, too: Only 11 percent of singles expressed interest in dating casually.
