You know how it is… when you first meet someone and really connect and you want to spend every waking moment with them. You start neglecting your other friendships… family… and make every effort to be with your new crush. So basically you’re madly in love with each other for a few months- and a few months later you can’t stand each other. What happened?? How did a hot and heavy burning flame extinguish so quickly leaving you smoked?

Unfortunately, you’re probably not going to like what I’m going to say… and it’s certainly not popular in Hollywood, romance novels and the movies, but slow down and pace yourself. Set boundaries from the start. I know boundaries sound like a dirty word, but they’re necessary in every aspect of our life, from sports to medications… otherwise we can easily get overwhelmed and sometimes anxiety can even take over.

It’s hard to make good judgments going 80 miles per hour. Be confident in setting some limits. In any relationship, it takes some time to figure out if this person’s going to be the right one for you. More often then not, though, we get into a relationship and it just jumps full speed ahead, without pumping the brakes at all. Also, where we left off being physically intimate with our last partner, seems to be where we immediately go to with our next, if we don’t really think about setting a strong foundation and setting the pace from the start. An idea on how to slow things down a bit might be to hang out with your friends one weekend night instead of spending the whole weekend together, or perhaps resist the urge to text each other constantly. You really want to get to know who that person is (like down to their core) before completely falling for them. Here are some important things to discover about someone early on in dating:

1. Find out as much as you can about their past relationships. Ask them why it didn’t work out and what they learned about themselves. Would they do anything differently in the future? What did your previous partners like about you? How did they treat you? Questions like this will help you see how they are in relationships.

2. Your love interest can be really good at saying and doing all the right things in the beginning to get you to fall for them, like all great players tend to do. Try to see how they treat people other than you and assume that’s how they’re eventually going to treat you, too. Find out about the person’s relationship with his or her friends and family. How does he treat his mom? Does he talk highly of her and sweetly to her? How does she treat servers when out to eat- with respect, kindness? Many of these small things really speak to a person’s overall character!

3. See how they react to stress. Is an episode of anger — with you or others — an isolated event or a regular occurrence? What about communication? Are they able to discuss things that you disagree about or have different view points on or do they shut down or just try to make you see things the way they do and never compromise? A big part of relationships is both compromise and communication.

So starting things off by pacing yourself leaves you a better chance of developing a strong foundation on which the relationship can grow by sharing experiences and building memories together. Remember it takes time, and it’s not something that should be rushed.