For nearly a year, Anuradha Awasthi’s relationship existed in the space between certainty and possibility. She and the man she met on a dating app lived over 1,500 kilometres apart. There were no grand declarations, no conversations about where things were headed within the first few weeks, and certainly no pressure to hit relationship milestones. Instead, they simply kept showing up for each other.
“It wasn’t that we were avoiding commitment,” recalls Awasthi. “We just weren’t trying to force one before we were ready.”
Today, social media would call what they were doing wildflowering—the latest dating buzzword encouraging people to let relationships evolve naturally instead of chasing labels, timelines or predefined milestones. But Awasthi laughs at the idea that she needed a trend to explain what felt instinctive.
“The relationship grew because we kept choosing each other,” she says. “Not because we’d ticked some imaginary milestone.”
Looking back, however, she believes their relationship survived for one crucial reason. Slowing down never meant avoiding difficult conversations.
It’s perhaps no surprise that wildflowering has found an audience. The Internet has become remarkably skilled at turning our romantic anxieties into neatly packaged trends. We’ve survived ghosting, breadcrumbing, zombieing, hardballing and floodlighting. Every few months, a fresh term appears, promising to explain why modern dating feels exhausting.
Wildflowering, at least on the surface, sounds refreshingly simple. Instead of treating every first date like the beginning of a five-year plan, it suggests allowing relationships to grow at their own pace. In an era where dating apps encourage endless swiping, and everyone seems to be ‘dating with intention’, slowing down almost feels rebellious.
But does it actually create healthier relationships? Or does it simply replace one kind of uncertainty with another?
Counselling psychologist Athul Raj believes the appeal lies in removing unnecessary pressure. “People feel pressure to become exclusive, define the relationship or plan the future within a certain period.” Without that pressure, he says, people often get the chance to discover whether they’re genuinely compatible. Emotional intimacy grows through trust, and feeling understood, not simply through a label.
However Raj points out, “taking things slowly should never become an excuse for leaving someone guessing.”
That distinction is exactly what relationship coach Radhika Mohta believes often gets lost in the conversation around wildflowering.
Questioning how the idea is a not some unique Gen-Z philosophy, she says, people have always moved through relationships at different speeds. Someone in their early twenties navigating careers, cities and identities will naturally date differently from someone hoping to settle down. “Slowing down doesn’t magically create clarity,” she says.
This is also where wildflowering risks running into the same problems as the situationship. One person may believe the relationship is naturally evolving while the other is quietly waiting for clarity that never comes. Dating apps, Mohta believes, have only made that uncertainty harder.
“Even a simple platonic friendship cannot thrive without clear communication, expectation-setting and commitment. The same applies to dating,” she adds.
Perhaps that is what wildflowering ultimately reveals. It isn’t simply a rejection of labels as much as it is a response to dating fatigue. After years of treating romance like a checklist, and constantly wondering whether a relationship is moving quickly enough, many people are choosing to step off the treadmill altogether.
