Dating Tips: The L WORD
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Sometimes it just slips out. And anyway, someone has to be the first one to say “I love you.” Oh, but the horror of saying it and not getting a response! How is one to handle that situation?
“You laugh and say you were only joking,” suggested one woman I asked. She really was not joking when she offered that juvenile but somewhat appealing piece of advice. She understood that in the scheme of all disastrous relationship moments, the unrequited “I love you” was among the worst, capable of sending even the most together, confident person, crawling under the bed.
Unfortunately, once you’ve said it, you really can’t go into a defensive tailspin. At least you shouldn’t.
Just for a moment, consider the best-case scenario. The one you love really loves you but was too surprised, touched or tongue-tied to respond right away. It may sound improbable that they’d have hard a time returning the L word after you’ve just laid yourself on the line, but some people need to think these things through. If you take back your own words too quickly, you make a bad situation worse. Maybe those three words were just temporarily stuck in your partner’s throat. Now they’re never coming out.
There are some less-than-ideal scenarios to consider too, like the possibility that you’re in love with someone who doesn’t love you back. Ouch.
The hard truth is that no matter how much fun you’re having together, saying “I love you,” is a relationship-defining moment, after which things between the two of you have forever changed. It’s sort of like saying, “I think we should see other people” and secretly hoping your girlfriend insists that she’s committed to you and you alone. She may surprise you and say, “I think that’s a great idea,” and next thing you know she has a new boyfriend when all you really wanted was a little reassurance.
Once you say “I love you,” you can’t go back to saying, “I like you a lot.” If you’ve ever been on the other side of this painfully awkward exchange, you know that’s true. In an informal survey of people who received the L word from someone they didn’t love, I collected this lame list of responses they came up with:
“I know you do.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m so glad.”
“I love your body.”
Yet everybody agreed on one point. They were skating on thin ice and only had about a week or so to come up with an “I love you, too,” or be single again. It wasn’t that the person who loved them gave them an ultimatum. Sometimes they made an effort to carry on as a couple who were happily “in like.” But once you rock the boat, you can’t expect to have calm seas. They both knew that there was a serious talk coming.
Perhaps the only thing worse than loving someone who doesn’t love you is being in a relationship with that person. Of course, it will never work. So, if you say, “I love you” and he says, “I love the way the moonlight is reflecting on your hair,” there’s not much you can do except give it time. But not too much time. Say, a week. Two weeks, if you’re dealing with an exceedingly guarded person, or one of those ultra-thoughtful “need to be sure” types.
The next couple of times you see each other, you have a choice. You can remain silent and wait for the other person to bring it up. Or, you can bring it to a head, either by saying, “I love you” again, or by sitting down and initiating the “where-is-this-going” talk. Then you just sit back and let things unfold. The bad news is you can’t make anyone else love you. But there really is some good news, too.
Didn’t someone once say, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?” Be happy that you have love to give and that you have the courage to express it. Didn’t someone once say we should love without expecting anything in return?
Even if you can’t achieve the wise outlook of a poet or the detachment of a Buddhist monk, you ought to be happy that you expressed yourself. It would have been a lot worse to have to carry on, waiting for the other person to bring up the topic of love, only to have things fester and fall apart in a well of bitterness and misunderstandings, without you ever knowing if you were loved.
Really, that would have been worse. If you can’t see that now, from your vantage point underneath the bed, some day you will—the next time you fall in love.
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