I have a dirty little secret that I don’t think I’ve admitted here before, but if I have, blame my repetitiveness on old age. Sometimes, when I’m stuck in traffic and need entertainment, I listen to Dr. Laura on the radio. Usually I listen to it to see who’s going to get more aggravated first – Laura or the caller – but every once in a while I take something away from the conversation that gives me pause for thought… or in today’s case, smacks me upside the head hard enough to give me a migraine.
read more ↓So one of today’s callers was a girl who had been dating this guy for nearly a year, and he doesn’t say “I Love You.” Not that he doesn’t love her – he does. And not that it’s too soon to say it – it’s not. The issue is his parents never said it all that often, and so he says he doesn’t believe in saying it. “Is this a sign?” she asked. And Laura’s response was essentially that a man who couldn’t tell someone he was in love with that he loved her clearly had intimacy issues and wouldn’t make a good partner, because when you really love someone, you want to tell them – you enjoy telling them. And when I heard that, I yelled “Yes, exactly!” And the person in the car next to me watched me talk to my radio and shook her head.
It reminded me of a past relationship in which I was told, “I don’t like saying it too often because I think it loses its meaning.” And at the time I kind of agreed with it because the relationship I’d been in before had lots of “I Love Yous” that rang hollow. We said it getting on the phone, we said it getting off the phone, we said it when we went out, sat at home, signed on and off messenger… all the time. So when this concept of not saying it all the time was presented to me, I thought it sounded reasonable… until I realized I rarely heard it unless I said it myself first. Sure, it was said in cards for special occasions and a reasonable amount in the beginning of the relationship, but as time went on, I was starting to realize that if it was going to be said, it was me who was going to have to initiate the saying of it. And the more I had to do that (on the times that I did – I still didn’t “overdo it”), the more I was starting to wonder if there was really any love there at all.
Because the thing of it was, even though toward the end of the “I Love You” relationship it was clear the love had dissipated, the first time he told me he loved me shook me to my very core. He looked me dead in the eyes and held my face in his hands like they do in sappy Rom Coms, and said it in a way that made me terrified yet swelled my heart all at the same time. It was something I’ll never forget. And when I think back to that relationship, I realized what made the “I Love Yous” ring hollow wasn’t the fact that we were saying them all the time so much as we grew apart. Because when we were in love, it felt fabulous to tell him I loved him, and even better to hear it back.
I juxtaposed it with the “Limited I Love You” relationship. The first time he told me, he didn’t look me in the eyes and made kind of a joke of it. I remember when it happened that I outwardly joked right along with it, but inwardly I felt… odd. I’m not saying that every time you say the words that they have to be an earth-shattering moment that rocks your fucking world, but at the very least, shouldn’t the first time be? Isn’t that a relatively big turning point in a relationship? You should at least be able to look them in the eyes, right?
Maybe it sounds dumb to you, but I don’t think love is a joke. I think it’s something profound and amazing and beautiful and fun and exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time, and that’s what makes it so tremendous. And I want someone who wants to share that with me all the time, and wants me to share that with them all the time. And I want them to tell me in fun and silly ways as much as they tell me looking deep into my heart and soul. I want a love that’s passionate and real but not above fart jokes. And I don’t think that’s too much to ask at all, because I finally believe that’s what I deserve.
(Okay, maybe not the fart jokes so much, but you know what I mean.)
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