Slow dating

Slow dating is deliberately taking longer: more messages before the first date, more dates before anything physical, more time before anyone says "exclusive". It is a pace, not a goal. Intentional dating is about knowing what you want. Slow dating is about how fast you find out whether this person is it.

Updated October 4, 2026

Means

Deliberately taking longer before meeting or committing

First seen

Coffee Meets Bagel's one-match-a-day model (2013) is the product later called slow dating; the phrase is attested by February 2019; a pandemic trend word in 2020 and 2021; no dictionary entry

Related terms

Talking stage, Situationship, Dating app burnout, Love bombing, Dry dating

The label covers at least three different ideas. We found a study of only one of them, and its result was not “the slower, the better.”

Signs you are slow dating (and when it is a slow fade)

Slow dating has a direction. Things happen late, but they happen.

• You have talked for two weeks and both know where it is going. You just have not booked it.
• Dates are a week or more apart, and nobody minds.
• Physical steps come after you have decided you like them, not before, as a way of finding out.
• One of you has said “I want to take this slowly” out loud, and the other agreed.
• Nobody is on the apps in the meantime, or you have both said that you are.

It is more likely a slow fade when the slowness belongs to one person.

• Only one of you sets the pace. The other waits to find out what it is.
• Replies get slower, not plans longer. Slow dating spaces out the dates. A fade spaces out the messages.
• They never propose anything. Every plan so far was yours.
• “Slow” arrived after a hesitation. “Let’s take it slow” was the answer to “Saturday?”, not something said up front.

Slow dating vs the slow fade, the talking stage and intentional dating

For the first few weeks, all four look alike: not much happening, nobody in a hurry. The difference is who wants what.

Slow dating and intentional dating often travel together. You can know exactly what you want and still book the second date three days after the first. Love bombing sits at the other end, with everything arriving in the first week.

How slow is too slow

The one kind of “slow” researchers have measured is how much people message before they meet. The link between how much people chatted online and how they saw each other when they met was a curve, not a straight line: more was not simply better (Ramirez et al., 2015). Our guess is that a long chat builds someone the real person then has to live up to.

Two rules of thumb, ours rather than the study’s:

• If two weeks of messaging has not produced a plan, propose one.
• If three months of dates has not produced a conversation about what this is, have it.

The better test is symmetry. Slow dating is something two people agree to. When one person keeps it slow and the other keeps waiting, it is closer to breadcrumbing, where the contact continues and the plans do not.

What to do about it

A pace plan. The numbers in it are our rules of thumb, not research findings.

1. Decide the pace before the first date. Decided during the date, it tends to be decided by the second drink.
2. Set a message-to-date window and keep it. One to two weeks, then a plan. Any longer and you risk meeting a chat history instead of a person.
3. See each other about once a week. Slow enough to think between dates, often enough to remember what they are like.
4. Say the pace out loud, once. “I like you and I want to take this slowly. Is that all right?” A yes makes it mutual.
5. Name your checkpoints and take them in your order. First kiss, staying over, deleting the apps, meeting friends. There is a usual sequence. Nobody signed it.
6. If your paces differ, be specific. When they are faster, name the step you are not ready for. “I’m not ready to stay over yet” names a step. “Slow down” names a mood. When they are slower than you can stand, ask once what the pace is for, and believe the answer.

Dry dating, meeting without alcohol, suits a slow pace, if only because you remember the dates. Roster dating, seeing several people at once, is not slow dating unless everyone on the roster knows.

If you slowed down because the apps wore you out, say so: “I took a break from the apps and I’m going slower this time.” Dating app burnout is a perfectly ordinary reason to end up here.

What the research says

We found no study that tests dating pace against how long relationships last. What exists is about first dates and intentions.

Ramirez, Sumner, Fleuriet and Cole found that curve in a national sample of online daters asked about their first face-to-face meeting (Ramirez et al., 2015). It covers the run-up to a first meeting, not the months after.

Sharabi and Caughlin surveyed 186 online daters before a first date and 94 of them afterward. What people had learned about each other online, from how similar they felt to how much they had shared, predicted how the date went, and impressions tended to dip once they had met (Sharabi & Caughlin, 2017). A slow chat helps only if it says something.

The most quoted number measures something else. In Match’s 2020 Singles in America study, 58% of single app daters said they had shifted toward more intentional dating in the wake of the pandemic. The survey covered 5,000 US singles aged 18 to 98, and the release tied the shift to “slow love” (Match, 2020). It measures intentions, not pace.

Bumble’s undated guide from the pandemic years says users were taking longer to get to know matches before meeting, and defines slow dating in those terms (Bumble, undated).

The idea goes back at least to August 22, 2013, when TechCrunch described Coffee Meets Bagel’s one-match-a-day model without using the phrase (TechCrunch, 2013). WeddingWire called slow dating a trend “making a comeback” on February 27, 2019 (WeddingWire, 2019). AP reported on August 26, 2020 that Coffee Meets Bagel co-founder Dawoon Kang described the company’s approach as “slow dating” (AP, 2020).

So “slow” now covers a product idea (fewer matches), a pandemic habit (longer before meeting) and a wellness idea about presence, which is about attention, not speed. No dictionary lists it.