A lot of people move too fast in relationships and it often leads to them fizzling out after a few months. If you want your relationship to last, it can be helpful to take things slow. When you get to know someone gradually, you have a chance to really get to know them.

You learn about their likes, their dislikes, their quirks, and what makes them tick. You also have a chance to build a solid foundation of trust and respect. Moving too fast can often lead to rash decisions and hasty actions that can damage the relationship.

So if you want your relationship to go the distance, here’s what you can do at the start, in order to take things slow and savor every moment and stage.

How to take things slow in a relationship?

1. Don’t think too much about the future:

One thing that definitely helps you take things slow in a relationship that has just begun is living in the moment. Appreciate each date on its own, appreciate each long conversation and each walk you take while holding hands.

This is the time in the relationship when you are allowed to not take everything seriously. You are still getting to know each other, so it’s inadvisable to put on unnecessary pressure. Inevitably, if you start thinking about what the future holds for both of you, and you start discussing it with the other person, but that can wait!

Doing it too early could be putting the relationship under pressure unknowingly. It’s true that everyone hopes for something in a relationship, but postponing conversations where you discuss marriage, living together, or having a family, avoids rushing the relationship.

2. Don’t worry about giving a label to your relationship right now:

When you start getting involved with someone, you try to figure out what you should call the relationship. However, if done too early you’ll be skipping many steps in a relationship that has just begun. If you truly wish to take the relationship slow, focus on how good it feels when you are together, rather than the labels you should give the relationship or one another.

Besides, taking things slow, allows you to reach the next stage of the relationship more calmly and decide easily what to call or consider one another. By then, you will be completely sure of what you are to each other, and you wouldn’t have had to rush anything.

3. Refrain from physical intimacy for the time being:

Many people believe that physical intimacy doesn’t hinder a casual relationship because that’s how they started the relationship. And while that might be true for some, for other people it could blur the natural progress of their relationship. If your goal is to take things slow, don’t forget to include physical intimacy in that equation. 

It’s a natural human response to bond quicker when we are physically intimate with someone. Some people even mistake this feeling for love. It’s not ideal to think that you are madly in love with someone if you wish to take things slow. Of course, you should be open with your partner about this so you both are on the same page. 

If you refrain from physical intimacy at the beginning of the relationship you will notice that you don’t have your mind clouded by hormones which will allow you to approach things logically and rationally. It will keep both your heads cool and allow you to explore other sides of the relationship first.

4. Don’t make that person the center of your world:

While this is not something that you should do at any stage of a relationship, it’s important that you don’t hyper-focus on your new partner or potential partner from the start.

We get it, it’s something new, you are very interested in that person, and you have the best of times when you are together. The thing is, you can enjoy it all, without making that new person your entire identity. Learn to save more intense passion and unconditional love for when you marry someone and they stay by your side for many years, making you their entire universe too.

So for now, when you start a new relationship, stay focused on other aspects of your life as much as before, if not more. The goal here is to not elevate the relationship to something serious before it’s time. To take things slow, let each one of you have your time together and apart.

5. Share what’s essential about you at first:

Remember that, even though this person has been nothing but kind to you, you are still getting to know each other. Everything is a surprise, be it a good or bad one. It’s great that you already reached a level of comfort with that person that makes you want to share everything about yourself with them.

However, you don’t know how they will react to certain things. The other side of the coin is that they haven’t learned to read your expressions completely, so you could be telling them something in a humorous way, and they misinterpret you, thinking that you were serious.

You could be overwhelming them by oversharing and making them feel extremely responsible for keeping secret what you’ve told them at a very early stage. Essentially, you would be putting more serious and/or very personal matters on the table that can weigh on the relationship. It will be harder to have the light and casual feeling of the relationship from now on.

Bonding by sharing personal things is great to strengthen a relationship, but you should save those moments for when you want to take the next step in the relationship. By then, you will know each other better, and how to support or comfort each other properly if you need to.

In the end, if you already moved fast and skipped a few steps and what you’re after now is to save a relationship that has moved fast then you can check this article out.