I wanna know...?

I love cake.

For anyone who watches “That ‘70s show”

It depends if you love that person back.

If you don’t feel it then don’t say it.

i tell my wife i love her all the time and her response is “thank you.” now, every once in a while she’ll say “i love you” back, but i think she missed a few classes on “returning” the line of trust and compatibility. your case is different. i know my wife loves me, but you must know and understand love in its “mature” state in order to appreciate it.

mature, as in, it takes a lot of seasoning and time and experience to know real love. you can say “i love you too” when you feel the partner is a thoughtful person in may areas. he or she goes out of his way to make you happy or he/she listens to you instead of just hearing what you say.

he/she is thoughtful and at christmastime your partner gives you something you always wanted because they LISTENED. thoughtfulness and trust are the foundation of love. if you dont feel these things, somebody needs to re-evaluate the relationship.

and, sorry, this advice is just the TIP of the iceberg…

I’ve said it without meaning it before and I felt kind of bad about it.

I’ve also said it and meant it, but not as much as the other person. It sucks when you can’t love someone as much as they want you to, or as much as they love you. =[

Have you ever been able to tell your significant other “I love you”? Or is it just your current? Do you love him/her?

Please, if it’s not someone that you “love” (yet or ever) don’t say it! I just had this conversation with my daughter – only 14, but she knows the history between my husband and I. He is the only person that I ever said those three words to, first and then, to beat all…he said thank you. NEVER was I the one to say it, ever, then he didn’t return the words. We still joke about it, but when he did finally say it to me, about a month later, it meant a lot to me!

Now, if it’s that you struggle with expressing emotion – have you considered therapy?

I don’t think this is exactly relevant to the question, but I’ll say it anyway. When I first fell in love with my wife, it was easy to say, “I love you.” It came along with this feeling of ebulliance and joy. I just wanted so badly to be with her every second I could.

Fast forward 20 years. Now, I don’t say it, because, although I love her, I don’t love her. It’s not the same as it was. I felt it was dishonest to say it if I didn’t feel it. And it had become more of a business-like relationship.

A lot of things happened over the last year, and one of the results of that was we ended up in couples therapy. It seems that she needs to hear “I love you” all the time. It reassures her, and makes her open up to me, and then she might express that in a more physical way.

So I say it. It doesn’t come with the same feelings as 20 years ago, but it is still true. It’s just so different. I can’t explain.

I don’t know if there’s anything in my story that helps you, dd521, but I hope so. I guess I’d say that if you do love the guy, just say it, whether you feel like saying it or not. You are not lying. We all need to hear it, and much more often than it is said.

I agree with a lot of other people: If you know that you love this person, absolutely say it. Holding back in life will only cause you heartache.

If you only like this person and you aren’t exactly sure how you feel, do not say it and explain to the partner why you don’t wish to yet.

IMO, just say it anyway. If they’ve said it, they want you to say it, and it’s definitely good to give your girlfriend what she wants (especially if it’s at no detriment to you, unless you uphold morals or something). It benefits you. You don’t have to mean it.

Assuming it is your girlfriend. If it’s like, your wife, then your issue is troubling. Or maybe you’re a straight girl or a gay guy. I don’t know. Whatever. Same thing.

@TheKitchenSink: ......... I really don’t even know where to begin. I don’t even know if I want to begin. What you just said is so flawed that I’m almost at a loss for words.

First of all, if they’ve said it to him, it does not necessarily mean they want to simply hear it back. I know that if I said “I love you” to someone and heard it back, only to find out they didn’t really mean it, I would end the relationship right then and there. If someone can’t be honest about their feelings in the beginning of a relationship, the entire thing will fail. For someone to truly express love to someone else only to realize the other person was faking it for their own benefit… That’s pure fucking evil.

@drasticdreamer, ty for taking the words out of my mouth.

Well, not simply to hear it back, sure, but generally to know that their other was reciprocal in that belief. And how would they find out? Only you can know, and if you don’t tall anyone, you’re set. You’re in complete control of that aspect.

If you want to think it evil, do so. All I know is it’s effective.

Doesn’t matter if they can find out or not, relationships
Are based on trust and honesty. You should never
Lie about love, and who cares if they can never find out, your guilty conscience should be enough to not lie about it. It’s just common decency.

Well I wouldn’t feel guilty, I know that much. If I didn’t love them anyway, why would I care?

Assuming we’re only taking it to the gf/bf level. Anything past that is ridiculous. You get what you want and then once you’re done you leave. Marriage or anything like that doesn’t make any sense if you’re not very much involved with the other person.

Just like many people are saying here, if you don’t feel this emotion, then you shouldn’t feel compelled to answer to it. You have to make sure that you really feel this emotion before just saying it to someone. I could never say it like that, just because someone else wants to hear it. Hope this helps.

@sink, wear a raincoat.

I think a flame shield might be more appropriate in this situation.

@Sink: I am truly curious about what led you to be the type of person you say you are (an amoral asshole, I believe you said elsewhere). How old are you and what has your life been like that you care so little for other people’s well being? I am not trying to attack you, just trying to understand you.

I concur with Augustian, a**hole. How anal are you SINK? How would you like it if you were in love with someone and you said it, and they didn’t return this very emotion. I don’t think that you would really like it. Frankly, I wish it would happen to you if you aren’t married.

@augustian: That’s just sort of how it happened? I observed and drew conclusions. I’ve just apparently arrived at different ones than most people. It might have something to do with my Asperger’s Disorder, but I tend not to fall on that crutch. I’m only 16, and my life hasn’t been that bad, relatively speaking; I have a kind family, albeit my parents are divorced and they work very long hours in low-medium pay jobs. The only bad things that have happened to me was getting pseudo-expelled from about three different schools, in their own very different ways of “pseudo” in this case. It’s nice that you’re going though this effort.

@tiggersmom: I don’t think you do concur with augustian, as noted by you insulting me directly after you said that, while he is ”not trying to attack [me], just trying to understand [me].” That doesn’t seem to be the case with you. Unless you’re just quoting me, in which case that’s cool. But it doesn’t seem like it.

Anyway, of course I wouldn’t like it. But we go back to the argument that I’m not lying about my feelings to myself, now am I? And I think we’ve established that I really don’t care about other people.

What a sad existence to not care about people, they are after all what makes the world what it is, good and bad. Yes it was a mirror of what you said. It was not meant to be an insult! Please rethink what you think about people, because I really have a huge heart. I give all the time to my husband, my children, friends, people, no reason, and charity. It really is a good feeling to know that you can make other people happy. Sorry if you took it the wrong way.

Ah, TheKitchenSink returns to enlighten us with his self-centered life vision.

Ahhhh, Asperger’s. I think maybe you’re not giving it the weight you should in your dealings with other people. It might help you in your relationships to know that how you perceive other people (and their feelings) can be greatly affected by Asperger’s. Perhaps you could work on adjusting your outlook in relation to that. Thank you for the information…it does help me to understand you better.

Why would the community chastise one so harshly for speaking his mind? That is really the only reason to have this forum. I must also say the young man is well-spoken, more so than some others I have heard from.

[mod says:] Just a friendly remember to play nice, Jellies. =)

What happened to dirtydevil521? Are we just talking amongst ourselves?

@shilolo: I never really left?

@augustian: Yeah, I know. I like to think that I do perceive other people all right, but I remain apathetic about them. I figured all I live for is to maximize my happiness, and to maximize my happiness, I must at times make others unhappy. I’ve felt that morals are a hindrance to such, so I disregard them. I’ve already arrived at this conclusion, and have thus far not seen/heard any evidence that would counter these points. I’ve heard the same ones that contest it easily 100 times by now, but the belief remains.

Of course, since I’ve never been another person, maybe I do just not perceive other people well at all. I’m generally pretty good at interpreting things like emotions I’ve found.

@steve6: Thank you :)

Yes, Aspergers. From what I know, the condition makes it harder to empathize with others. It also makes it hard to understand emotions, in general. I think, actually, that what TKS has said here illustrates the condition fairly well, from what I know (which isn’t much).

It is for me, another example of how chemistry actually not just influences, but determines what we think. The genes that TKS was born with are expressed in such a way that wherever the locus of empathy is in the brain, that is not very active in his brain.

It seems like he doesn’t take things personally. So, for example, I’m talking about him right in front of him, and that probably doesn’t bother him. It’s just kind of interesting.

Because he doesn’t feel as most people do, he is able to dispassionately look at other people’s behavior and emotions, and can be very good at interpreting them, sort of like literary interpretation.

In addition, most people with Aspergers seem to have one particular interest or skill that they are very good at. To take a stab at TKS, whom I hardly know, but I love guessing games, I’d say his skill has to do with expression of ideas or abstract concepts. I could be wrong, of course.

My cousin and his son have Aspergers (a very mild case for my cousin; much more serious for his son). He once asked me if there was any evidence of it in my branch of the family. I didn’t know of any at the time. Now I wonder.

Well put, daloon.

I my only “particular interest/skill” would just be video games? I don’t do much, so I just play games all the time, and since I’ve done that so much, I’ve gotten quite good at them. But that’s not all that irregular, and I fail at just about everything else.

@TKS, how did you learn to express yourself (in written form, at least) so well?

I don’t know. I rarely even read books of my own accord. I’ve just always been very good at spelling and vocabulary, which I think is par for the course with Asperger’s (IIRC, Mr. Asperger himself called those with Asperger’s “little professors”).

I don’t want people here to think that aspies are automatically mean and self centered. daloon, it is not exactly that we don’t feel as most people do, it is more like our own feelings are not accessible to us. I think my case is probably milder than sink’s, but I have trouble accessing my emotions. My husband will sometimes remark to me that I am in a good or bad mood and I am like oh, my you’re right i hadn’t realized. Though I don’t access or process my own or other people’s emotions well, I have developed a very different philosophy. I try to practice ahimsa, and to that end am a vegetarian and social justice activist. I do have the aspie advantage of not caring what other people think of me which keeps others disapproval from stopping me.

but back to the question at hand. I don’t have as big a moral problem with sink’s answer as some do, but the problem is that this won’t actually get sink or dirtydevil what they really want out of the situation. probably sink thinks he wants sex or maybe his motivation is not to get harassed and have long tearful conversations about feelings with his gf. his reaction to the situation makes a lot of sense to me, as he doesn’t really want to talk about emotions and would rather just say the right thing and move on. generally though, being honest about your feelings (if you can figure out what the hell they are) is actually the most efficient way to get the most out of the relationship. If the person loves you as they say they do, they will stick around until you feel comfortable saying it, too. When I met my husband I had just come out of a long relationship and said I didn’t want to hear the L word. so instead of “i love you” he would say “yellow fruit” so i would know what he meant without the pressure to say back something that i wasn’t ready for. Eventually I was ready.

@vegangypsie Thanks for that well written answer. Welcome to Fluther!