Here’s the thing: a relationship moving too fast may not look unhealthy from the outside, but can often feel the deepest, heaviest, most exhausting, painful and heart-gripping.
Many connections that begin as a race are either painfully unaware of how quickly they’re getting to the finish line or are burning themselves out along the way (with no end or light at the end of the tunnel in sight).
Do you find yourself in a pattern of relationships quickly reaching their expiration? Are you someone who often jumps in and out of, or rushes into and through relationships?
If you’re questioning whether you’re in a relationship that’s moving too fast, this is what it can look and feel like.
A connection that requires trickery, denial or manipulation
A genuine connection and relationship cannot be built on forgery. While much of this can simply be telling yourself there’s a connection when there really isn’t (as a means to continue fostering a disingenuous relationship), moving too fast in a relationship looks a lot like a wolf in sheep’s clothing and feels like touching a hot stove yet denying the burn.
This can look like hyper-focusing on the things you love about someone to maintain your feelings for them, having to downplay certain red flags to avoid compromising the connection or using superficial methods to elevate or prop up the connection.
Consistent emotional highs and lows
A relationship moving too fast will often experience persistent hot and cold extremities, even to the point of equating those extreme highs and lows as a normal part of relationships.
At one point you’re lovey-dovey, then suddenly you’re blowing up over a fight.
One moment you’re lavishing one another with affection and attention and the next you can’t stand to be in each other’s presence.
One day you’re happily content in the relationship, then the next you’re on the verge of breaking things off or ending the relationship for the Nth time.
Taking (big) steps before genuine readiness
If you’re moving too fast in a relationship, you’re more than likely taking (big) steps before you’re actually ready. Or you’re jumping to milestones simply because it’s what you’re supposed to do [next] or it’s what the other person wants.
The bigger question is if relationships moving too fast often suppress readiness for the sake of avoiding loneliness or rejection. How often do people blindly walk through milestones as proof of their feelings or emotional loyalty despite not actually being ready to take the step?
Skipping important steps altogether as a means to get ahead
Approaching milestones quickly is one thing but rushing them, even to the point of skipping important ones altogether, is another.
It’s a lot like skipping the instruction manual to build something. Instead of making sure you have all the tools and pieces accounted for and following each step, you’re assuming which pieces go where and starting the build from your own knowledge or guesswork. In doing so, you risk the final product not functioning properly or working altogether.
The key thing in this analogy is that no one intentionally skips reading the manual because they don’t care whether the product will work, most just assume (or are confident) they know what they’re doing and want to avoid wasting time to justify skipping certain steps or putting it together their own way.
Similarly, a relationship moving too fast, where important steps are being skipped and crucial pieces are overlooked, has its own risks.
Frequent, intrusive feelings of regret and uncertainty
In a relationship moving too quickly, it’s common to experience feelings of regret, uneasiness and doubt. This can have a negative impact on trust, including self-trust.
It can feel like you’re going through the motions but not exactly aware of or in control of what’s going on around you. Things are happening and you struggle to keep up. You might even feel stuck in a continual loop of worry, remorse or uncertainty, yet can’t seem to slow the cycle long enough to understand why or how to stop it.
For example, you were intimate with this person very early on, and while initially you thought you were ready, the experience left you feeling empty and ashamed – you wish you would have waited.
Despite your feelings after that first time, you dismiss them and continue being intimate with them, only to repeat the cycle of experiencing and downplaying those feelings.
Behaviors of unrestrained impulsivity
Unrestrained impulsivity in a relationship moving too fast can look like impulsive behaviors or irrational decisions.
Either way, there’s a lack of self-control or restraint, and a lot of doing without exactly thinking. A lot of mistakes are being made, and in a fast-paced relationship frequent mistakes start to look more neglectful and intentional.
This also means there’s a whole lot of consequential suffering without enough allotted time for repair. A relationship moving too fast is less likely to allocate the space and time it takes to navigate hardship, make certain changes and nurture reconciliation.
It will often feel like one unresolved, negative experience after the next (or many at unraveling at the same time).
Upending or abandoning your life
When you’re quick and almost immediate response is to alter your daily routine, schedule and priorities, walk away or abandon your responsibilities, fall into patterns of self-neglect, or to conform your day to day – time, energy and effort – around that other person and their life, that’s a major indicator of a relationship moving too fast.
In many unhealthy relationships, the first and often discreet sign is self-erasure or loss of self.
While your life and the way you operate is likely to shift to some degree, everything in moderation is considered. A healthy relationship does involve the willingness and ability to make room for another person and that relationship to be a part of your life.
But if you’re personal or work life begin suffering when your focus has moved entirely to that person, their life and the relationship, that’s a sign of putting all of your eggs in one basket.
Dismissing or becoming lax on crucial boundaries
When a fast-paced connection feels right, leniency can feel normal in situations of upholding certain boundaries. It’s almost like our feelings for the person outweigh a boundary’s significance.
The depth of our feelings for a person may determine how much we tolerate – we’re quick to allow some to cross lines and not others.
If you’re ignoring certain boundaries, enabling someone to cross the line or blindly accepting apologies without changed behavior, you may be expediting a relationship to its grave rather than breathing life into it.
Allowing chemistry, or Love at first sight to take the wheel
Just so we can get this out of the way – chemistry is important. But it is not the be all, end all, nor should it be driving or directing the quality and success of a relationship.
The phrase, “hot and heavy” points to initial connections where fierce chemistry and feelings are not only obvious but insatiable (ravenous, insistent). This is all good and dandy, except that a relationship moving too fast typically hands over the keys.
In and of itself, despite how good and right it feels, logic and reason tend to go out the window.
This can look like engaging in physical intimacy or saying “I Love you” before you’ve actively started collecting the necessary materials and building that foundation together. These are typically relationships that start constructing the roof before they’ve even built or solidified the structure that supports one.
When chemistry or Love at first sight is the first or primary determinant, you’re likely going to evade or skate over other important factors and elements of a genuine connection.