Lexicon ·
taking it slow
verb phrase
- Stated meaning
- Letting a connection develop at an unhurried pace, without pressure from either side.
- Operating meaning
- A pace announced as policy, which sets the terms of a negotiation nobody has opened and tells the other party what their request would have been answered with.
- Origin
- Standard in relationship advice long before the apps, where it described pacing a physical relationship that both parties were already in.
September 3, by text, at 11:30 pm. Asked “free?”, I replied in 44 words that I was very attracted to her, that I do not move that fast and that I do not do one-night stands. Her answer was that the question had been about hanging out. The phrase itself was not used; the position was.
The phrase began as a request, addressed to a specific proposal, made by somebody already in the room. It named a thing that had been suggested and asked for it later rather than now. In that form it is one of the few pieces of dating vocabulary that means exactly what it says.
What the market did with it was move it forward in the sequence. Content on both shelves now teaches the pace as something to state early and unprompted: men are told to establish it so they are not read as available, women are told to establish it so they are not read as available. The advice is identical and is sold to each audience as protection from the other. Stated early enough, a pace stops being a response and becomes a term of trade, published before there is a trade.
Under load it prices something nobody offered. A policy announced in advance of a proposal is a decline of a request that was never made, and it hands the other party a description of what they were apparently asking for. Both people then have to deal with that description, which is now the only version of the evening in writing.
May 6, walking after a date, A. said she preferred to take it slow physically. I asked for something inside the same hour, and when the answer was a look rather than a word I reduced the request instead of withdrawing it. On September 3 I issued the policy myself, at 11:30 pm, in 44 words, to somebody who had typed one. Whatever either of us has said about pace, the column that records it reads 1 and 0 for that evening in May and 18 to 1 across the arc it belongs to, and both of those figures are mine.