Citizensheep » What the hell does ‘I love you’ really mean?

13 April, 2008

This post is in: Ramblings

What the hell does ‘I love you’ really mean?

This post was published as dated, but I kept it private until now (May 2009). At the time it was quite personal, so I sat on it; now it’s a bit more academic so it might as well go live at last.

I’ve been struggling with this. It seems to me that people often say ‘I love you’ to mean ‘I fancy you and I care deeply about you at the moment, but that may change’.

And to be fair, what alternative is there? What other word so simply and effectively expresses the mess of affectionate feelings we may have for someone?

I thought it was more than that though. I thought it was a commitment, and that there was no going back once expressed (imagine our parents saying they loved us, and then saying they’d changed their minds; or worse, that they used to think they loved us but realise now that they were mistaken).

Maybe I was wrong: maybe love can dwindle (I’ve no doubt it can change in nature). But then surely that seems a sham, a dishonesty, a lie even: if it doesn’t mean something deeper than can be expressed in other words, why say ‘I love you’ in the first place? The word certainly suggests commitment, so a later change of heart would in turn suggest a flawed – or even false – commitment.

I sound bitter, I’m not: just confused.