Ambivalence & The Gamble of Slow Love: An Investigation of Romantic Decision-Making

What do you do when a desire to choose a romantic partner carefully runs up against the constraints of time? Join Anastasia Berg and Diana Brown for a conversation examining the “Slow Love” paradigm of dating–that is, a model for romantic decision-making that assumes one should proceed slowly and cautiously into commitment. Besides wholesale recklessness, are there any reasonable alternatives?

While its risky to dive in without knowing what you’re signing up for, waiting too long is a losing bet for many. Berg and her co-author Rachel Wiseman show how Slow Love stalls crucial decision-making so long that people miss out on partnership, children, and family life for years of their lives, sometimes forever. In their book, What are Children For? expand their critique of overly-cautious decision-making to the decision of whether or not to have a child. They walk clinically through the concerns that trap would-be parents in perpetual ambivalence, and ultimately bring the reader around to considering where they stand on fundamental questions around what it means to be human: what do we think counts as a dignified life? What do we think of the human form? What are our hopes for a human future?

In this conversation, we will bring the insights of What are Children For to the slow love problem. Is ambivalence around commitment a state that should be leapt over? What does it take to leap past ambivalence, if time and careful scrutiny won’t necessarily walk us through it? What is the space between slow love and total recklessness? Should we be making partnership decisions without sufficient “reasons”, or reasons of a different kind? 

This salon is part of the Cold Feet Chronicles, a discussion series investigating how modern individuals make decisions around romance, love, marriage, and commitment, absent  family, culture, or religious norms to guide such decisions.