just imagine that you wake up, hungover, leg hair like AstroTurf, your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth like a week-old cornflakes, you haven’t washed, it’s the third day of your period and you’re not entirely sure where you left your handbag. You turn to the man in your bed - a man you met two weeks ago and have been on precisely one date with - and, staring him right in the eyes, you say, ‘I think I’m in love with you.’ Your breath, I imagine, smells like the business end of a dairy farm.
So started my own life-changing relationship. The poor bastard didn’t know what had hit him, of course. But, as my housemate at the time so memorably said; ‘Hey, he’s been in war zones. He’s probably seen worse.’
Let me be quite clear - I have never before (and will never again) told a near-stranger I love them. I’m not even sure I’d ever actually used the phrase ‘in love with you’ until that moment. The first man I ever said I love you to - aged 17, in his kitchen, after school - replied ‘I don’t know what love is.’ Which for some reason I took as a sign to stay with him for another year and break my heart into a hideous collection of fag ends and cheese wrappers in the process.
But is there actually a ‘good’ way to say I love you? Is there a ‘right’ time? A right person? Are we compelled into declarations by pure infatuation alone or, perhaps, sometimes, fear, over enthusiasm, wanting to ‘fit in’, self-indulgence or simple hope? Is the act of self-expression, of trusting affection and communicating intention a better measure of how you are feeling about yourself than the way you feel about someone else? I mean, these aren’t questions we can answer for everyone at any time, but it may be worth having a little dig around your own interior before you start throwing around the big L-words. Yeah, that’s right - take advice from the woman who told a stranger from work that she was in love with him while taking most of the skin off his shins with her leg hair, after one date.
‘Love is a risky business, there isn't really a way of making it less risky,’ psychologist Philip pa Perry tells me over email. ‘There is always a possibility you may be deceived, rejected, blind, or too damn keen.’ The key, she explains, is to both mean it when you say it, and say exactly what you mean. ‘Be specific,’ Perry says. ‘"I love you" is a vague cliche. So spell out what you appreciate about the other person. Tell them what you like, admire and revere about them. Tell them specifically how you feel when they are near and how they bring up that response in you. Tell them how their words and deeds affect you. Think about whether your "I love you" is a gift or a demand and if it is the latter, best keep it to yourself.’
Saying I love you can be a burden, a demand, an appeal. While a relationship must be based on mutual, healthy interdependence, love, on the other hand, will not necessarily be met with love. To love someone is not the same as being loved in return. And, if you’re saying ‘I love you’ simply in the hope that it will elicit love in the other person, then you may well be on a log flume to disappointment.
But, if what you’re feeling is love - and you want to express it, without the expectation of it being met with the same - then my god I know how hard it is to keep that to yourself. Nor should you. ‘We like to express ourselves, it is part of being human,’ says Perry. ‘A new relationship is full of exciting possibility. We want to grab those possibilities and make them real... If you say it first you are allowing yourself to be vulnerable by showing your heart (at least you are if you mean it). So fear of rejection will come into it.’ This fear of rejection argues Perry, is part of the reason why an unmatched, reciprocated expression of love can be quite such a kick in the cunt.
‘I'm convinced it is such a tragedy because some love has a neediness, not unlike the need we felt for our earliest caregivers,’ she explains. ‘Whose lack of love for us, incidentally, could mean we might not survive.’ Our very existence and survival relies, in those early years, on reciprocated love. We need our parents to love us, in order that they feed us, keep us warm and keep us out of danger while we are helpless babies. That makes the need for reciprocal love a very deep and very important pattern to try and unlearn, or unthinking in later life. Sure, the person you love may be emotionally unavailable, in another part of the world, suffering grief, already in a relationship or simply unattractive to you - however rational their reason for not loving you, their rejection may feel horrendous. It may even feel life-threatening. But it isn’t. Not quite. I promise.
If you suspect that you are in love (and you’ll probably know it, when you feel it) then you may well feel like screaming it from the rooftops. I know I did. But remember - there is another person in this scenario and, if you love them, then you will care how they feel. So tell them in a specific, honest and undemanding way how you feel and let them process it in whatever way and time it takes. They may love you back. They may not love you at all. They may be somewhere in between. Your feelings are your feelings and, I’m afraid, they don’t necessarily have the power to change other people’s feelings. But you should respect your feelings and, most importantly, respect yourself.
I had spent a lot of time and a lot of money trying to learn my own worth before I fell in love. It took therapy, being single, exercise, surrounding myself with good people and doing work that felt important before I built up the sort of self-esteem that allowed me to, truly, love another person. It’s worth a shot, at least. Because, hey, if you still don’t fall in love with another person, at least you’re able to really like yourself
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