How Do You Know If You’re Moving Too Fast? You Don’t

There is a strange obsession with timing when it comes to falling in love.

Three weeks is too soon. Three months is when things supposedly become serious. Six months means you should know where it is going. A year means you should probably be talking about the future.

Eighteen months and apparently you should know whether this is the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with.

But who decided that?

When did falling in love become something we needed a schedule for?

We are constantly being told how quickly we should move in a relationship. When to say “I love you” and when we shouldn’t. When to make it official or if it’s too early. Whether or not it’s the right time to introduce someone to your family. When to sleep together. When to move in. When to know if they are “the one”.

And if you happen to do any of those things before the internet-approved deadline, suddenly you are moving too fast.

But how do you know?

You don’t!

That is the uncomfortable truth about love. There is no formula for it.

You can spend two years slowly getting to know someone and still discover that you are completely wrong for each other. You can meet someone and, within weeks, feel more understood than you have with someone you have known for years.

One relationship might need time. Another might feel effortless from the beginning. Neither is automatically more or less real.

Social media has turned relationships into timelines.

We watch strangers explain when they moved in with their partner, when they got engaged, when they knew they had found “their person”, and suddenly we are comparing our own relationships against people we have never met.

Maybe you have been seeing someone for six months and you are still unsure.

Maybe you have been seeing someone for six weeks and you already know.

Maybe you fell in love after three dates.

Maybe it took three years.

None of those timelines make your feelings more or less valid.

There is, of course, a difference between moving quickly because you genuinely feel something and ignoring red flags because you desperately want something to work. Taking your time can be valuable. Getting to know someone properly matters. Protecting yourself matters.

But there is a difference between being careful and being afraid of breaking an imaginary rule.

Sometimes we become so concerned with whether we are moving too quickly that we forget to actually live the relationship we are in.

We spend our time analysing.

“Is this too soon?”

“Should I have said that?”

“Why haven’t they said it back?”

“Is it a red flag that we’re already this close?”

“Should we wait before doing this?”

And suddenly, something that should be experienced becomes something to be monitored.

Love becomes a checklist.

But life does not work like that.

There is no guarantee that waiting six months will make a relationship safer. There is no magical point at which you become immune to heartbreak. There is no number of dates that guarantees someone will be good for you.

You could take every piece of relationship advice ever written and still get your heart broken.

And equally, you could ignore every supposed rule and meet someone who changes your life.

If you love someone, you love someone.

That does not mean you have to abandon your judgement. It does not mean every intense feeling is automatically healthy or that you should ignore things that make you uncomfortable.

But it does mean that nobody else gets to decide the speed at which your relationship becomes meaningful.

Your friends might think it’s too soon.

Your family might think you’re being reckless.

Someone online might tell you that you should wait three months before making it official.

Someone else might tell you that if you haven’t said “I love you” in six months, something must be wrong.

But they are not living in your relationship.

They don’t feel what you feel when that person walks into the room.

They don’t know the conversations you have when nobody else is listening.

They don’t know how safe you feel with them, how understood you feel, or how naturally the relationship fits into your life.

And they certainly don’t get to put a stopwatch on it.

Perhaps we need to stop asking whether we are moving too fast and start asking whether we are moving in a way that feels right for us.

There is a difference.

Because sometimes moving quickly is exactly what life requires.

We do not know how long we have with the people we love. We cannot guarantee that there will always be more time to say what we feel, to take the trip, to make the memory, to tell someone that we love them.

Life itself does not follow a three-month rule.

People meet, fall in love, get married, have children, move across the country, start businesses, change careers and completely alter the direction of their lives in ways they never planned.

Nobody tells us that we are moving too quickly when we decide to change our entire lives for a job we have been offered.

So why do we treat love differently?

Perhaps because love makes us vulnerable.

We want to believe that if we follow the rules, we can protect ourselves from getting hurt.

If we wait the right amount of time, ask the right questions and move at the right speed, maybe we can guarantee that it will work.

But we can’t.

There is no perfect pace for falling in love.

There is only your pace.

So if you meet someone and it feels right, don’t let a stranger on TikTok convince you that you are doing it wrong.

If you need more time, take it.

If you want to take things slowly, take them slowly.

And if you fall completely, unexpectedly and perhaps a little inconveniently in love with someone sooner than you ever imagined, maybe that’s okay too.

Because if there is one thing we cannot schedule, it is the moment our lives change.

And perhaps that is what love is supposed to be.

Not perfectly timed.

Not carefully planned.

Not measured against someone else’s timeline.

Just two people deciding what feels right for them.

So how do you know if you’re moving too fast?

You don’t.

You know if you’re happy.

You know if you’re safe.

You know if you are being respected.

You know if you are being yourself.

And sometimes, you just know that you love someone.

Maybe that’s enough.

Do you.

Love at your pace.

And let everyone else keep their stopwatch.

Written by, Poppy Gibbs