The Beginning Can Lie: Why Fast Love Feels So Certain

It would have been easy to open the Prince's folder, count the roses and the messages, see the key handed over on day eight, and call it love bombing. The vocabulary was waiting for me.

I made myself start again from day one, because people rewrite beginnings after endings. Once something has hurt, every early tenderness gets searched for warning signs, as if the ending had been hiding inside the first kiss.

Day one

She met him at a dinner she almost cancelled. He sat across from her because two guests arrived late. In her account she wrote I noticed his hands first, crossed it out, and wrote: Lie. I noticed that everybody liked him.

He overheard her saying she disliked a city everyone else loved, asked why, and they argued for twenty minutes. "You're wrong, but you're interesting," he said. At 12:14 he texted that he still thought she was wrong. At 12:16: Tomorrow?

The next night cost €28.40, bad food under fluorescent light in clothes meant for somewhere better. She kept the receipt and wrote Best night on it. That did more damage to my theory than the flowers. The beginning wasn't seductive because it was expensive. It was seductive because they were having fun.

The speed

Three dates in four days. Five in seven. By day five he said he'd never felt anything like it. On day eight he gave her a key. Later came forty-eight white roses.

I found him through an old work address. He's married now, with two children, and his wife knew he was speaking to me. His first reply was: "Does she call me the Prince?"

He remembered the velocity more than the details. "She made intimacy feel efficient. Like we were skipping all the bullshit." Were they? "No. We were skipping time."

I underlined that. You can talk about jealousy for six hours and still not know how someone behaves when jealous. You can agree about money before you find out what happens when one of you earns more. They exchanged information at great speed and mistook it for experience.

About the roses, he said: "I think I was in love with how I felt around her."

Fast isn't always false

Sometimes two people are simply excited, and that's fine. Speed is still worth noticing, because it replaces the things only time can show you:

• How does this person act when tired, hungry or disappointed?
• What happens the first time you say no?
• Have you seen them with their friends, and yours?
• Are you sure of them, or sure of the feeling?

I've written about other early signals in What the Wallet Actually Signals. The Prince's story is chapter thirty-three of Become My Papi. More about the book in Become My Papi: The Book Behind the Investigation.

Questions people ask

Is a fast-moving relationship a red flag?

Not always. Sometimes two people are simply excited. But speed can replace the experience that only time gives you, such as how someone behaves when tired, jealous or told no.

What is the difference between love bombing and genuine excitement?

It is often only visible later. In Become My Papi, the man involved said he was in love with how he felt around her, and that they had been skipping time.

Where is this story from?

It is chapter thirty-three of Become My Papi by Nora Vellick.