this is where I pause.

Notes from a woman who stopped mistaking urgency for intimacy

I wrote this sitting across from him at lunch, watching the way his body moved faster than the moment required. The reaching. The leaning. The need to fill space. I wasn’t judging him. I was studying myself.

I realized how much my appetite has changed.

“What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.” — bell hooks

When you lead with the physical, that becomes the glue. And when the physical is the glue, there’s never enough emotional or mental substance to sustain what you’re trying to build. Attraction can open a door, but it cannot furnish a room. Chemistry can spark interest, but it cannot carry a relationship once novelty wears thin.

I’ve lived that already.

I’ve learned that rushed intimacy often masquerades as connection. Not mitigating PDA quickly. Wanting to touch before understanding. Wanting closeness before context. That isn’t depth. It’s acceleration. And acceleration creates a false sense of intimacy long before the real thing has time to show up.

“There is a difference between being loved and being consumed.” — Audre Lorde

Sitting there today, I noticed how uncomfortable he seemed with stillness. How silence felt like something he needed to fix instead of honor. How his body kept trying to rush us into familiarity. And it didn’t make me feel desired. It made me feel alerted. Because taking your time reveals discernment fast. When you slow things down, the ones who want partnership reveal themselves. And so do the ones who just want access. You begin to see the difference between people who date from desperation and those who date from fullness. You distinguish those who cannot fathom being alone and those who are content in solitude but open to sharing space intentionally. And I saw it clearly today.

What surprised me wasn’t his behavior. It was my response to it. There was no flutter. No confusion. No temptation to override my knowing. Just a calm, almost maternal clarity that said: my love has outgrown this pace.

I’ve grown up.

My love needs quiet to breathe. It needs restraint. It needs time to observe character, not just chemistry. And even though he is a mature young man in many ways, my love is asking for a depth that he isn’t ready to meet. That doesn’t make him wrong. It makes us misaligned.

“At some point in life, the world’s beauty becomes enough.” — Toni Morrison

So tomorrow, I’m meeting with him to stop talking to him. And not because he did something terrible. Not because I’m angry. But because I refuse to continue something that requires me to regress. I’m no longer interested in false passion or rushed intimacy. I don’t want heat that burns fast and disappears. I want the slow burn that lasts. I’m choosing patience over performance. Discernment over desire. Depth over urgency. And for the second time, walking away doesn’t feel like loss.

It feels like proof that I finally trust myself enough to wait.

Tune in tomorrow on the next episode of Dragonball Z… let’s talk about dating Africans as a Black American woman 😄😭