Love is a Feeling
Happy belated Valentine's Day
I’ve never taken much stock in the idea that you should wait some long amount of time to say I love you. There’s an amount of time that’s culturally appropriate to wait, certainly, and I support anyone waiting long enough not to freak someone out, but I think proposals of love are a bit empty on their own, so you should have fun with it.
Talk is cheap! Saying “I love you” is much easier than driving someone to the airport at 4 am when you have a nasty head cold. It’s far easier than responding reasonably and calmly when the person you love says something thoughtless that hurts your feelings. It’s far easier than fulfilling duties day in and day out, years at a time.
These are often (reasonably) seen as the fruits of love, but they are quite obviously more serious vows than what can be spoken, certainly in the throes of an early and exciting romantic connection.
It’s popular to make pronouncements about what sorts of things can’t coexist with love. “He wouldn’t do that if he really loved you,” is an aphorism. “Love doesn’t look like this” something you might see on social media. “That’s not love,” a friend might tell you. These are useful in that they encourage the listener to question the foundation of the relationship - here assumed to be “love” - but I’m afraid that they’ve contributed to a culturally limited definition of love. If love never coexists with bad actions, well then, if you’re certain you love someone, there’s certainly no way that you’ve treated them poorly, is there? This view is false and potentially dangerous.
