Is there such a thing as slow love?

What are your thoughts? would love to hear from you!

I finally watched When Harry Met Sally. The 1989 standard for rom-coms begins with Sally pulling up with her bandwagon through the main quad triangle of the University of Chicago, my alma mater.

When I attended UChicago, When Harry Met Sally was slowly no longer our claim to cultural relevancy. The Divergent Movie Franchise had just filmed scenes in Mansueto Library, the new futuristic dome of a building attached to the old brutalist library.

Both films embody an aspect of my experience of the University–smart, deep overthinking young people trying to navigate the world through the lens of all the new philosophies and ideas learned while taking classes in our grueling core curriculum.

So sit back, relax, and let’s chat about an idea I’ve been meditating on recently. About a month ago, I hosted a dinner salon for Analog Social in London where we addressed the question: What is love?

It was a lively, intellectually stimulating dinner salon filled with an exploration of love in all its forms—romantic, platonic, familial, new, old, puppy love, etc. One person mentioned Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving. Since then I’ve devoured the book.

Let me start with this simple idea from Fromm. He says in The Art of Loving:

Modern man thinks he loses something—time—when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains—except kill it.

I might have devoured Fromm’s book, but I’ve been savoring this quote for the past few weeks because it led me to ask the question: is there such a thing as slow love?

Well, you must be wondering: shae, what do you mean by slow love? Follow me.

The premise of When Harry Met Sally is that men and women can’t be friends. For 12 years, Harry and Sally had been orbiting in and out of each other’s lives, dating other people, marrying someone else, and eventually divorcing that person. During this time, were they really just just friends or were they just in a state of being not yet together, just slowly falling in love?

Have you ever experienced what I would call the urgency of love? It goes like this: You meet someone new and suddenly you’re head over heels, rearranging your whole life around this person. This is more than just being in love. It’s doing it quickly. When you try to explain how you knew someone was the one they would marry or commit to long term, you just say “When you know you know.”

But….what if you don’t know immediately or even quickly? For some, a person wanting to take time to know a person means they’re not serious or intentional about “love.” I also think there’s a difference between being slow to commit and being afraid of commitment.

It’s the fear of commitment (or maybe even abandonment, not sure if there’s a better word for it. You tell me.), that comes to mind when I talk about slow love. In this age of instant gratification, hijacked reward systems, and digitally induced forms of validation, we can feel like something is wrong with us if we don’t instantly experience this thing called love.

I am left wondering: In this day and age, is love still love (to us) even if takes a while to develop? Can we value something that takes time equally as something that is instant?

So far, I’ve been referring to romantic love, but what about platonic love? Have you ever met someone and knew immediately you wanted that person to be your best friend through thick and thin? Did you go on one friend date or see them from across the room and just know they were going to be your (best) friend?

I haven’t. If anything, I am a bit skeptical when someone instantly decides I’m their best friend. What choice do I have in the matter? Is it really me you want to be friends with or the idea of me you’ve cobbled together based on limited information?

bell hooks definition in All About Love is quite compelling in this regard. For hooks love is:

The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth… Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

How can you seek the spiritual well-being and development of a person you barely know? What are you ushering that person towards? Or maybe love is being willing to grow with a person no matter what life throws their way. It’s a choice as hooks says.

Spoiler alert: Harry and Sally get married. According to Harry it only took 3 months. Sally clarified “12 years and 3 months.” It happened slowly then all at once.

There is no fancy conclusion here. If anything, I’ve left you with more questions than answers. I’m not an authority on this topic. I’m just another thinker like you writing a super long meditation on my notes app during my commute. If you’ve ever read or listened to one of my newsletters this long stream of consciousness comes as no surprise lol. Exhibit A:

conversations with (new) friends: a salon

Anyway, we had such a long waitlist for this special dinner salon, so since many of you were unable to attend I wanted to extend the conversation and hear your thoughts! Feel free to respond by commenting below or replying to this email.

Thoughtfully,

Shae

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