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Since it’s Valentine’s Day and TheGloss staff has eaten our body weight in Russell Stover chocolates (we shoplifted them, it was awesome) let’s get all sentimental, maybe cry a little bit. Let’s tackle questions like “when should you say I love you in a relationship? Is it okay for me to say it first? Is that just dumb? Should I say it on Valentine’s Day?”
More and more, I’m erring on the side of “say it whenever you feel it.” Valentine’s Day, tomorrow, a week from now, whenever.
Because, look. There’s this woman who lives in my apartment building who says “I love you” to everyone who passes by. She is, I imagine, suffering from Alzheimers, or maybe is a stroke victim. She spends a lot of time in the lobby with a nurse, saying “I love you” to the doorman, to the nurse, to me, to anyone, really. I don’t reply to her. I just do that nervous, tight lipped smile that you do when you see old people where you think “God, don’t let me end up like that” (maybe because we hope that the people who do end up like that just didn’t hope not to hard enough in their youth).
One day a friend was with her, and I listened to her friend explain to the doorman that she had never been like this when they were younger, and that she had always been “a very dignified lady.”
That struck me, because I come from a family of women who pride themselves on being very dignified ladies. It was a long running joke that my Grandmother considered “love” to be a four letter word. Not because she didn’t love us, but because saying so just seemed “a bit much.” She’s only recently decided to start saying it- though she says “ta voglio” because this business of saying “I love you” seems “like something Italians would do.”
And I can’t blame her. I’m not good with telling people I love them. I’m certainly not one of those people who can casually say “oh, thanks, I love you” when people give me mail or are generally pleasant. I’ve gone through fair substantial relationships where I’ve never said the love word.
Again, not because I didn’t feel it, but because saying it just seemed so dangerous. The other person might not say it back. And sometimes, even if they did say it first, I held back because it seemed, well, a bit much. It’s certainly more calculating to avoid saying it. Not saying it means you won’t reveal any neediness or dependency on someone else. And if I needed any validation of that approach, then there are about 100 different relationship-advice-books-for-women that would confirm I was doing the absolute right thing.
But we are a needy, dependent race, held flimsily together mostly by emotions like love.
I regret every time I didn’t say it.
Not because I think it would have a made a difference in those relationships. I regret it because not saying it seemed like a betrayal of something good about myself. Holding back seemed to imply that the emotion wasn’t worth voicing, or that mentioning it would have only had a negative outcome. And, just as often, I probably didn’t say it because I was afraid of whether or not I’d be able to bear the burdens that voicing love can confer.
I wish that I had been braver.
Because if the other person doesn’t reciprocate? That’s alright. Admittedly, it’ll make you feel like moving into your physiciatrist’s basement for a week or two, but it’s okay. Because that love is yours. You are allowed to love anyone you want. You’re allowed to tell them you love them. And if it’s not reciprocated doesn’t mean that it’s not a valuable emotion. It’s proof that you have the capacity to love, and that’s probably the best thing about being human.
Say I love you. Say it all the time, to everyone you love. Fling it at them like confetti. Say it first. Don’t listen to people who tell you to play it safe in that regard. Don’t worry that you won’t be able to handle the outcome, because you will. Be bold. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.
Because I’m worried that otherwise we’ll end up like the old woman in my lobby, with a lifetime of unsaid “I love yous” spilling out onto anyone who’ll listen. And I just don’t want us to end up like that.
Bragging about shoplifting isn’t cool or “awesome” by the way…although it is immature.
This is very cute and I agree with alot of it.
However, I still feel that you shouldn’t use “I love you” too lightly and just throw it around everywhere. Use it when you mean it. It’s a very special three-lettered word that should be said with meaning, especially in relationships. Surely the meaning behind I love you doesn’t mean the same when you are infatuated with someone that you’ve met for 2 weeks as with when you are with someone who has been there for you all the time.
People use words too carelessly these days, everything seems to mold into gray areas instead of having their original meanings.
Love is a is a four lettered word…
This is great. Send it to every major newspaper and news station. I think everyone needs to read/hear this.I’m a very affectionate person and always have been, and I’m very expressive. I hate that some people get so tense and freaked out when I say it.
I grew up with a very loving family and we all say it to each other. It’s sad that some people think it’s so taboo. ):
Love is giving what you do not have to someone who doesn’t want it, or so i have been told. I actually like saying “i love you”, but it creeps me the fuck out when someone sais it to me.
That said, Jennifer, I really do love you. And that post wasn’t bad either.
I strangely fall on both sides of the fence. In terms of relationship [because really I've only had one 'real' one], I’m hesitant; it seems so much more LOADED than with friends. My boyfriend J and I were together for about a year before we ever really said it, though we both knew. To be more accurate, he said it the first time after we’d only been dating a few months [and a couple of them were spent apart; he's in college 14 hours away]. He was wasted because one of our best friends N had just come out to him and it made him realize that N’s relationship with his parents was not all hearts and flowers like he’d thought for years. J’s relationship with his father tends to be awkward and strained at best and he always held up N and his dad as what he thought the ideal father-son relationship was supposed to be, when he realized the times N had been kicked out of their house was because they disapproved of his sexuality it was a pretty big blow to him and he compensated by drinking FIVE WHOLE BEERS [okay, he's a lightweight], getting outrageously drunk, and talking about his feelings for hours [which included telling both of us he loved us over and over and that he knew it was fast to be saying it to me but he knew I was a keeper from the start, yadda yadda]. Of course he forgot entirely that he’d done that by the next morning, but we’ve had fun teasing him about it ever since [with affection, naturally].
The next time he told me he loved me was an accident; we were talking on the phone and before he hung up he said ‘Love you Mom!’ out of habit. Which I also teased him about endlessly [especially since I'm five years older]. Though it did finally segue into me saying ‘You know that while I am not ACTUALLY your mother I do still love you in a romantic, non-maternal way’ and since then we can’t fucking stop saying it but I don’t think that’s bad and I really don’t know what took us so long.
With friends, however, it comes out pretty quick. Only when I mean it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Naturally it’s a different kind of love, but I don’t think that means it should be disregarded. I belong to a circle of friends who are mostly open about saying such things [even though most of them are male]. To be honest, the ‘I love you’s’ do MOSTLY emerge when someone either: a) says something hilariously mean or b) does or says something hilariously dumb [another common reaction: petting people on the head and saying 'You're so pretty..']. But hey, if your friends love you through that you know it’s not all bad. And many of our interactions are based on affectionate mockery anyway.
Semi-related: I have a friend/previous co-worker who is now a professional athlete in Europe. It always makes me smile that most of the comments and posts that he leaves for people on Facebook or that they leave for him are he and his guy friends from back home saying ‘Man I miss you like crazy! I love you! No homo.’ What can I say, if it works it works.
Beautiful. Thank you for writing this.
I just phoned my grandmother. Thank you for this post.
I love this post.
No, seriously – there are two phrases that need to be said and meant more often: “Thank you” and “I love you.”
I am so excited that you wrote this – I hate all those relationship guides that tell you to hold back/not say it first. I have/will always be someone with a huge heart and believe that one of my finest qualities is my ability to love even with all the “mess” that has happened in my life. I say it to anyone and everyone when I know that it’s true and I really mean it.