By Mayur Kaushal
A few months back, my friend told me about a man she had been seeing for six weeks; the two of them had spent three weekends in a row together, had cooked dinner for each other, had met the other’s dogs, and had stayed awake until 2 a.m. talking about their most bizarre childhood memories.
On asking her how things were going, she sighed and retrieved her phone. “To be honest, I’m worn out,” she said. “I think I should raise the ’what are we’ issue this weekend, or else I’d be being foolish. But each time I consider bringing it up, I get a tightness in my stomach since I really do enjoy the way things are at the moment.”
That kind of situation is something that almost anybody who has been in a relationship over the past five years will have come across. We’ve come to view dating as if it were project management: you’re expected to reach certain milestones according to a fixed timetable such as the first date, the third date, becoming exclusive, having a soft launch on social media, and meeting the other person’s friends otherwise you’re meant to feel as though you’re wasting your time and should just give up and start swiping again.
That’s precisely the reason why “wildflowering” has been appearing all over my feed lately.
The term is derived from wildflowers, namely those that appear in the cracks of sidewalks or on the sides of highways without anyone having planted, watered or pruned them. In the context of dating, it means choosing to allow an emotional bond to develop at the speed at which it naturally wishes to, rather than imposing a strict label on it just to ease your own short-term anxiety.
It seems simple enough, but in reality it represents a fundamental change from the way most of us were taught to look after ourselves.
For many years, the modern method of dating has been extremely well optimized. Before you even say hello, you go through the potential partner’s profile against a list in your mind. When you meet, you have high-stakes cocktails that cost sixty dollars and in those situations, both of you behave as if you’re applying for a mid-level management job. You keep looking out for any warning signs, attempting to work out whether the person sitting across from you is going to fit your five-year plans. It may be efficient, no doubt, but it’s also entirely dull. It converts what ought to be a sensitive and inquisitive human interaction into an evaluation.
Wildflowering wants you to temporarily put aside the checklist and instead focus on how you actually feel when you’re in the room with someone.
do your shoulders lower? Do you laugh because something really was funny or because you’re trying to maintain the vibe? Are you interested in what they think ?
Now the first and entirely reasonable objection to this is that “wildflowering” sounds rather romanticized rebranding of a situationship; we’ve all had the experience of someone saying that they “don’t like labels” only for them to suddenly ghost you after having given you three months of free emotional support. There is a real difference between avoiding accountability & deliberately choosing the right time.
A situationship is based on vagueness; one person generally wants some clarity whereas the other avoids discussing it in order to keep their own options open. This results in a situation where you have to constantly tread carefully, fearing that asking a simple question will make the other person disappear.
On the contrary, wildflowering does require a great deal of open and honest communication. That means when you’re sitting across from someone at a casual diner or on a bench in the park, saying ,”I really do enjoy spending time with you, and I would like to get to know you better, without feeling the need to define our relationship before we actually know each other” — it’s an agreement rooted in mutual presence, not a way of avoiding any effort.
The way to do this generally involves altering the surroundings as well. Dinner dates held under pressure tend to make people self-conscious. It’s difficult to relax when you’re sitting directly opposite someone in a brightly lit room and at the same time, have to look attractive while eating pasta.
Those who engage in wildflowering usually prefer quiet, relaxed kinds of activities. This includes going to a morning farmers’ market, sitting on a lawn drinking iced coffee, or assisting someone in choosing a birthday present for their sibling — situations in which you are alongside rather than directly facing the other person. It’s about environments that allow for uncomfortable silences, bad days, and genuine conversations to take place spontaneously.
The true test of wildflow-ering isn’t about meeting somebody who’s interested in slowing down. The real test is learning to accept your own discomfort.
Although labels provide us with a feeling of safety, even if that safety is merely artificial, saying that someone is your boyfriend or girlfriend after only three weeks doesn’t in fact ensure that they won’t break your heart within three months; it simply gives your brain a moment of certainty and thus stops the panic.
It’s frightening to give up that false sense of control, since it involves acknowledging that love is naturally unpredictable and that the best relationships generally can’t be based on a pre-determined plan.
Perhaps we are at last ready to abandon the illusion of control. Perhaps we are fed up with trying to nurture romance like a well-tended garden in which every stem has to be tied to a stake. If we can place a little more trust in the process and ask for fewer answers, it just might happen that the things which grow on their own end up with the strongest roots.
