help! the l-word?

[cimorene]

for those of you who are happily settled in romantic relationships with life-partners:

how big a deal was saying 'i love you' the first time? did you ever say it? did it occur to you that it was a big deal? did you bypass it as sapped of all meaning and express yourself some other way instead? was there ever, like, a mutual confession, and if so, do you think of it as a milestone, or does it blend in because really, in retrospect, you both knew it already anyway?

(i have only my one, personal experience to draw from, and wax_jism and i differ wildly in our use of the 'love' word. i don't know how realistic basing myself on that is. fictional!BM and RFM are not like me. they are more the hallmark-card-buying sort of person, so i need a more representative sample.)

Comments

[norah.livejournal.com]

It was less of a big deal than it had ever been when I said it before, because I had no doubts. But yeah, it was a big deal. Because, power and all - she who speaks first has most to lose, right?

[cimness.livejournal.com]

>she who speaks first has most to lose, right?

in that specific conversation, yes, but realistically and in the long run, not really, i think. unless you genuinely didn't know how your partner felt.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

I'm someone with a similar singular, personal experience-- like yourself, I imagine, I fell in love with another slasher via AIM and email. It was a bit of a big deal (I said it first, and it was less "I love you" than "I'm in love with you, OK?") because slasher friendships are archetypally between (usually straight) women who know each other intimately, spend significant energy and hours in one another's company constructing elaborate worlds of sexual fantasy for release into a huge system of their peers, but don't (supposedly) feel sexual-romantic longing for one another. Because there was a pre-existing social space for the kind of friendship we already had, there was no romantic-track feeling to our relationship; despite the many hours I spent every night on AIM with her, we weren't "dating", and presumably we could have continued on in that fashion interminably without feeling strain.

In the first few weeks after we became textual I was filled with a kind of stoic, butch hesitancy to say "I love you" or even reference our relationship as a romantic relationship. Then I loosened and gave in to my true nature which is that of incredible emotional puppy, and I say it all the time. And that's my story.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

heee. i'm an incredible emotional puppy too. wax_jism thinks i'm insane in an irresistably adorable manner. i don't really say 'i love you' all the time, though, because i know she considers it sort of a foreign language.

are you still long-distance?

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

It's always been a big deal with me. It's just such a big thing, because you're letting yourself open for rejection. I think as well, that if you're in one of those intense reciprocal love affairs where everything is perfect and you're sure the other person is madly in love with you, and yo're madly in love with them (which has happened to me exactly once and I'm still with that person), then there's also an element of anticipation about saying it. And maybe an element if not wanting to jinx things by speaking them out loud and making it all real. It's very complicated. I remember wanting to say it very much, but not daring.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

hee. well, i'm sure wax is madly in love with me, but we both know she thinks 'love' is a silly meaningless word and will never use it, but she knows what i mean when i say it.

>And maybe an element if not wanting to jinx things by speaking them out loud and making it all real.

and i know that feeling too. oddly enough it wasn't just present the first time.

[jennaria.livejournal.com]

:wry grin: I don't remember the first time either of us said it aloud. The first time it was said, full stop -- or at least implied strongly enough that the first (or maybe second, by that point) clue-by-four hit -- was her to me, in email, which I think I still have saved on the Dinosaur. And it was indirect, something like it is you whom I love, part of a longer paragraph passionate about what she was feeling at that point (which didn't just involve me, it was a larger where-is-my-life-going thing). I responded in kind, but I don't remember the words.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

hm, yeah, i guess that out-loud vs. print declaration thing is much more important in long-distance relationships. i wasn't even thinking out loud because i hardly EVER talk to the waxlet out loud.

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

it was a big moment for us. we had a strange start to our relationship (she was dating someone else) and when we got together, we had declared this free and open, easy-going sort of thing. i remember once, after we were dating for months when someone asked us if we were girlfriends now. and we were all awkward and didn't know how to answer. and then talked about it and decided yes. so it was after about three months that i was just feeling it so strongly that i was bursting to tell her. and so i did. or, i said, 'i'm falling in love with you.' and she said the same. it was a happy night.


i just checked with rach and she said, yeah, it was a big moment for her too.

:)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

awwwwwwwwwwwh.

♥

even if this doesn't help me i should have asked before. everybody has these warmfuzzy stories.

[aynatonal.livejournal.com]

My first important relationship, both of us were kind of fucked up about love and even though we did love each other, we agreed that "I love you" was such a trite and cliched phrase, without personal meaning, and we wouldn't use it. So instead, we said "I adore you." And even though we broke up long ago and later she got married, divorced and had two children, and I'm getting married next year, when we talk on the phone, that's still what we say to each other.

Fast forward to my next important relationship, and I'm still kind of fucked up about love. I felt like telling K I loved him for months, but couldn't bring myself to do it. Finally, we were lying in bed one night and we got into a bit of a fight that culminated in him saying, "I don't even know how you *feel* about me!" And me saying, "Well, I kind of, you know, think I might possibly, um. Be in love. With you." And then I burst into tears. Then there was hugging and kissing and mutual declarations and stuff. So it was pretty memorable :)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

that second one is REALLY cute.

i don't think that deciding it is a trite and cliched phrase devoid of personal meaning is NECESSARILY indicative of being fucked-up about love. i mean, you might well be, but, you know, it IS rather cliched. and it's used to mean such a wide range of things that it's actually sort of non-specific.

[syredronning.livejournal.com]

I got to know my hubby first as bdsm playpartner, and for a long time we settled for this ("he's living so far away", "we're in other relationships anyway", "I really like him and we get along very well, but there is nothing more"...). So when I finally fell _in love_, it was a very important and almost painful thing to go and tell him, because everything we had so far could end at that point, in case he wouldn't have been able to handle this more of feelings and commitment. Thankfully, he didn't run away screaming :) Subconsciously, we knew that we were loving each other already, but it was a big milestone to voice it and face the consequences.

[hollsh.livejournal.com]

It was a big deal to me, because I've heard it before and I didnt feel like it meant as much, but when Chris said it, it just felt really, well, right. I think because we were just lying in bed, cuddling, and he said it and just hugged me closer. It wasnt right after sex or anything, just one of those serene moments where you're just lying there enjoying each other's presence.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

so was that a long time ago like the first time you and he were seeing each other? how serious were you already?

[hollsh.livejournal.com]

We'd been dating over a month, maybe near the two month mark, and I'd moved in with him.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

that's not very long then.

[hollsh.livejournal.com]

No, not really. But I guess we just knew.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

you're that kind of person. i mean that in the best possible way. although wax is *not* that kind of person, and i don't mean it as an insult to her. she's sort of... snapish. spockish. and i think it's cuter than cute. she's cautious. but so cute. ♥

i knew. i mean, i knew way before i fell in love that i could and i made the conscious decision to not try to stop myself. you probably remember when i was agonizing over it actually--it was before you got pregnant, shortly after we met.

[penm.livejournal.com]

I don't really have anything interesting to say on this subject, because I've never been able to say the words and mean them romantically. I don't really think that at this point in time -- I mean, I don't, am not even sure what words mean in that context.

I use the word 'love' with a lot of things. My sister, my books, Neapolitan ice cream, shoes, and coffee, to name a few. I've said to an internet boy say 'I love you', signing off, but it felt hollow and shallow (when I was dizzy with that first 'real' crush. When he said it to me, though, I felt like it was something good and great and to be cherished because it was brilliant and new, and I thought he maybe might, even though at the back of my mind I knew he couldn't possibly, because grade school romances never last).

I've also said to another, more serious, older-and-wiser guy, 'Listen, I love you, or maybe I don't, or maybe I might, someday, just not right now, okay?' But I don't even think I knew what the hell I was saying. I still don't. Love is a very confusing business.

I guess I'm just sort of biding my time, waiting until it's my turn, until it's like, seriously my turn, until I've grown up enough to know if it really is cliched and trite, or if it's something real and important.

I've always seen myself with a guy, holding hands in the hallway, leaning against his locker and smiling, but it doesn't matter if it's a girl. I mean, the sort of love one reads about -- the sor tof love I think you mean, I like to think, in my romantic way, that it has no boundaries. Gender, age, social status. So I could fall with a girl five years older than I am, a princess, or maybe a girl living in a trailer, and if I was, indeed, in love, it wouldn't matter, would it?

I try to keep an open mind towards love, and its changeable nature, but a diet of cheap, high-school romance novels at a too-young age was really bad for me, and formed some sort of prefabricated view of love. Everything's just sort of being redifined as I go.

Also, this boy once told me, "You invented love." I said, surprised, "I did?" and he said, "Of course you did. Do you think anyone defines love in the same, precise way you do? You invented love." So I guess love is in the eye of the beholder. Might mean one thing to someone, another thing to another person, so on and so forth.

Whoa. Sorry. Didn't mean to ramble on and on at you. I guess what I'm trying to say is... from the bottom of the age totem pole, the world littered with bi-weekly recyclable boyfriends, love is just something weird and not altogether 'real'. It's a cheap and watered-down version of the 'real thing', used mostly in MSN screen names such as "OMG I LUV U BABY 4EVA U MAH BABYBOI 4 LYF!" It's Avril Lavigne on the radio, and couples snogging two seats away from you at lunchtime. That's the purest form of love down here. I hope it gets purer.

(And I ramble on again. I'm going to stop now, honestly. Thanks, by the way. This really made me think.)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

i don't think the meaning of 'love' will get purer, though. it's the nature of words for basic concepts to get diluted metaphorically, and by dumbness, into closely related meanings. plus no one defines it academically the same way. plus no one feels it the same way--not even, i suspect, the same person in love with two different people.

a romantic life-partnership is something you build--the emotion too, the commitment, although i'm not saying there isn't something magical there, because there is. but that's just the base. the vast majority of it is work (even if it's just psychological work, adapting in your own mind to living in partnership with someone else). and so relationships are organic changing things, like emotions. words about emotions can't have totally static meanings.

so it really makes sense to search more precisely for ways to say what you really feel, and what you really mean, than 'i love you,' which is awfully uninformative for your partner. but i feel that perhaps a relationship in which those particular words are *never* said may be unrealistic because they're such a, well, fixture of culture.