Chapter VII:
I Love You

Continued From
Chapter VI: On The Rooftop

I already mentioned that Emily was the first person to have ever told me that she loved me.  Of course my family had been telling me that they loved me my whole life, but when Emily said it, it was different.  I already mentioned, too, how I royally messed up the moment when Emily shared this with me.

It took several years for me to figure out why my failure of a response didn’t destroy the relationship I had with Emily.  I have since come to recognize that when a woman tells you she loves you, it is generally advisable to say something–say anything!–other than Oh… That’s… Cool. She had put herself out on a limb and, at least in the moment, I hadn’t been able to do the same.

I also already mentioned that within a matter of days, I was able to say, “in complete certainty,” that I loved her too.  In retrospect, however, I now realize that Emily and I weren’t talking about the same thing.  Even when we “agreed” about love–that is, could say the same three words to each other–we weren’t speaking the same language.

Similar to the way that there are two stories behind each situation–the easy story and the true story–there are at least two ways that we think about the words I love you.  When I say I love you, I could be saying any number of things.  The thought occurred to me that something happens to a relationship when there exist two dissimilar understandings of the three words.

Allow me to explain.

After I told Haylie that I wanted to sit around the fireplace and tell stories to my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, she became curious about what stories I pictured myself telling.  I told her that I knew of only one so far–the “I Love You Story.”  I told Haylie that it was because I thought there was something important going on in the way that it had come about.

I already mentioned that I have dated somewhere between nine and eleven girls in my life.  I say somewhere between nine and eleven because there are a few that might go either way.  Maybe it was dating, and maybe it wasn’t.  Zachary told me early on in our friendship that I, more than anybody else he knows, put the casual in casual dating. He’s probably right.

At any rate, of those nine or eleven, only five of the relationships had time to progress to the  I love you stage.  And of those five, I think I only really meant it once.

It’s important that I not confuse my words here.  I say that I only meant it once, but that is maybe not the most accurate way of thinking about it.  It might be more accurate to say that I only understood the full weight of the words once.

I had once dated a girl who my friends referred to as a “serial dater.”  She had developed a habit of moving quickly from one relationship to another, barely stopping to breathe between them.  Since her sixteenth birthday, she had never been single for more than a few weeks.  When I asked her how many different people she had been “close” to she gave me a ballpark figure of “more than forty.”  She had told most of these partners that she loved them.  I don’t want to appear too much of a grinch here, but my immediate suspicion when she told me this was that our hearts don’t have that much real love to give–certainly not enough to share with forty people in four years.

I suspected then, just as I still suspect today, that we can’t share true love with that many people.  We can certainly share something with that many people.  If it is with forty different people, whatever “love” we’re sharing is probably not the type of love that I am looking to discuss.

This same girl told me that when it came to love, if she felt it, she had to say it.  Fully aware of the brief nature of some of her “relationships”, I asked her if there was a time frame that should be observed here.  She said there wasn’t, and that it might be two weeks and it might be two months.  It all depended for her, but when she felt it, she had to say it.

And she usually only said it to me after we had gone on an exceptionally well-planned date or after we had consumed a particularly large amount of alcohol.  For her, I love you more or less meant I have great feelings of affection for you.

And affection is something that is particularly sensitive to things like experience and circumstance.

Well-planned dates and alcohol are generally the types of things that build affection between two people.  In this sense, it was perfectly understandable why she told me that she loved me when she did.  And for me, it was particularly easy to incite such a response.  But when she said those words, something was missing.  It’s not that I didn’t believe her, per se.  It’s just that I believed that there was more to love than what she seemed to be sharing.

I said that I only understood the full weight of the words once.  Every other time when I said the words, I meant them in the purely affectionate sense.  In a majority of cases, when I said the words I love you, I could have meant any number of things: I really like you right now; you look very beautiful; I want to get in your… good graces; or in particularly selfish settings, I’m going to say something that I want you to say back. That last meaning was one that I employed in particularly self-conscious moments.  It was more of a confidence-building maneuver.

But there was one situation where it meant more.

If when I say I love you, I simply mean that I feel warm fuzzies for somebody, then I am compromising the full nature of the phrase.  If it is a temporary and fleeting sentiment, then I’ve missed the boat completely.

I dated a girl who said that when she felt it, she had to say it. And that idea is not completely off base.  But if the three words convey a simple feeling, then we’ve made a mistake.  Instead, my strongest sense is that when I tell somebody I love you in a romantic sense, its fullest significance is realized only when it is tied to some idea of commitment–something that lasts.

Here’s a hypothetical:  I am out on a date with a young lady.  We have a good time.  We enjoy the company of each other.  By the end of the night, she tells me that she loves me.  I tell her that I love her.  Great.  So far so good.  What happens in the morning when we’re maybe not so free about saying those three words?  Then what?  If we share something in the night that we cannot share come morning’s light, what, in reality, have we actually shared?  Not much.  And in the end, my sense is that is meaningless–that is no sharing at all.

My sense is that this exact thing happens with more things than just the three words, I love you.  There are probably a lot of things we find to be easier done in the night than in the daylight.  That’s just my guess.

During my sophomore year at University, I had dated a girl named Jennifer who understood this idea of night and day, and the disparity between the two.  We were sharing a particularly drawn-out goodnight kiss at her parent’s cottage and I had asked her if we should be nervous about her parents interrupting us.  “So what if they do?’ was Jen’s response.  She went on to share with me that there was nothing shameful about the way that we were behaving.  Why I had felt shameful about kissing a girl goodnight, I’m not sure.  But I did, even though she had encouraged me not to.  For her, there was no way that a relationship could be healthy if it was comprised of things done in secret or in shame.  The notion that her parents could step into the room, see our embrace, and not be angry with us was an unfamiliar idea to me.  For Jen, it was important that the way we interacted not be something to be hidden, but instead be something we could speak openly about without fear that our actions were in any way shameful or disrespectful.  This idea would later become very important.

I already mentioned that it took me a long time to understand why my failure of a response to Emily’s confession of love had not ruined our relationship.  That’s because we had two different understandings of what was going on.

When I eventually told Emily that I loved her, I was giving voice to the idea that I thought she was pretty great and that I had enjoyed spending time with her.  My response was very much one of appreciation.

Emily had meant something different.  For her, the statement I love you was a profession of commitment.  For Emily, the words I love you represented a deep appreciation of another person–a deep appreciation of me.  But the words also meant more.  The words signified a commitment that said, all other considerations aside, I chose to exist in relationship with you.  That’s the only way that I can explain why she didn’t go running for the hills when I said what I said.  In hindsight I can only consider my words to have been a miserable failure of a response.

Oh… That’s… Cool…

There is no doubt in my mind that my words were a letdown to Emily.  But the words did not represent a deal-breaker, and if nothing else, they demonstrated complete honesty.  Emily’s decision and her commitment had been made without any regard for my possible response (or lack thereof).  Before I had given any guarantee that I would meet her toe-to-toe in the relationship, she had determined that, for better or for worse, she was going all in.  In hindsight I can only imagine how much courage that took.

Even after having pondered upon the situation at great length, I am to this day overwhelmed by the significance of this story.  I am overwhelmed to understand that Emily, knowing full well that I may or may not feel the same, had committed to exist in relationship with me.  Some of my more devout friends would be unable to ignore the theological implications of this story.

There’s a scene in the film adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook that sometimes flashes through my mind.  The Notebook is one of several books and films that I’ve read or watched (and when it comes to The Notebook, I’ve done both) to try to impress a girl.  For whatever reason there is one scene in particular and above all others that continues to stay with me.  And, in case it matters, it didn’t escape me that the following scene, perhaps the climactic scene of the film, was added by the screenwriter, and does not appear in the book.  But that is neither here nor there, I suppose.

Noah and Allie–the story’s two main characters and estranged lovers–cross paths for one of the first times in seven years.  Noah asks Allie what she wants out of life.  Allie says you can’t just ask a question like that–it’s not that simple.  Noah asks Allie to imagine what she wants out of the future and then asks:

NOAH: Would you just stay with me?

ALLIE: Stay with you? What for?  Look at us, we’re already fightin’.

NOAH: Well that’s what we do, we fight… You tell me when I am being an arrogant son of a bitch and I tell you when you are a pain in the ass.  Which you are, 99% of the time.  I’m not afraid to hurt your feelings.  You have like a two-second rebound rate, then you’re back doing the next pain-in-the-ass thing.

ALLIE: So what?

NOAH: So it’s not gonna’ be easy.  It’s gonna’ be really hard.  We’re gonna’ have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you.  I want all of you, for ever, you and me, every day.

For whatever reason, that whole scene sticks with me.  Allie ends up being unable to say what it is that she wants and, at least for the time being, leaves Noah standing there in the rain.  Alone.

Emily and Noah share a similar understanding of love, I think.  For both of them, the sense of commitment doesn’t outweigh the sense of affection, but instead balances it.  Certainly the affection leads to commitment, and relationships seldom skip affection and simply begin at commitment.  Both are necessary; the two must balance each other out.  Somehow Emily knew that.  Noah evidently knew that.  I am still learning that.