But "I love you" is so intense!

50 ways to avoid your lover.

Original column: Carolyn Hax, August 31 2024 (scroll down to letter from “Affectionate”)

My take: The letter-writer loves her family, but wants help expressing that when she’s with them. What she’s been saying is “You are loved,” and she says it as she’s walking away. This elicits “Love you, too.” But the whole business is just uncomfortable.

Carolyn offers several suggestions—accept the awkwardness; write it instead of speaking it; etc. But she acknowledges the inherent difficulty of telling someone you love them, and praises the LW for trying. “It’s hard,” she writes.

AdviceObsessed understands that it’s hard, and thinks Carolyn’s suggestions are all fine, as far as they go. But I do wish she’d gone further, because the LW’s question is bigger than it looks.

Never fear, though: AdviceObsessed will tackle this on Carolyn’s behalf.

To start with, it’s not just hard to say “I love you.” Lately, it’s hard for us to say “I anything.”

We say “Agree…” “Hope it’s okay…” ”So excited…” “Need to tell you…”

But whenever we can, we drop “I.”

And by “we,” I most definitely include AdviceObsessed. Yes, yes, I do this, too! All the time! And I’m convinced it matters—but I’ll get to that.

First, what’s driving this? Almost certainly, social media plays a part. Texting &etc. all require brevity. That gets us in the habit.

It could also be that we’re very busy. That’s certainly the impression we create: that we can give our words only glancing attention, as we dash off to something else (“Looking forward!“).

Whatever its cause, though, the effect of the I-less statement is cagey and dissociative. We try to warm it up with exclamation marks (“Hope you get better!!!”). But this doesn’t really cut it. There’s no way around it: It’s an arms-length way to talk.

And nowhere is this sadder or more confusing than in its commonest use: “Love you.”

“Love you” is the classic three-word declaration, with its foot on the brake. It asserts love, but with a piece held back, and that piece is the lover.

Now back to Carolyn’s column. Her LW took this even further, by actually using the passive voice: “You are loved.”

And readers, why did she do that? Why do we all do it? Here’s a theory: If we say it out loud -- the whole, active-voice, non-truncated sentence—“I love you” sounds like a really big deal! It sounds really intense!

We think about saying it, then we feel uncomfortable, and the next thing we know, crack! We’ve chopped off the I. We’re back to “Love you!”, where everyone can relax.

But we need to fix this; we can’t just take it lying down. So how should Carolyn have advised the LW? She should have made the case for the whole-hearted, full-throated, no-holds-barred declaration: the classic-and-never-bested “I love you.”

But readers, please, help me understand this phenomenon with the Is. It’s puzzled me for a long time. I’m sure it’s important, but I don’t feel I’ve quite gotten to the bottom of it, and I’d really, really love to hear your thoughts.