Growing up, my parents always taught me, as I'm sure most parents taught their kids, that saying that you love somebody is something that shouldn't be taken lightly. I always remember my mom telling me that "Love is not something you take for granted, and you should only say it if you truly mean it" -- which is something that has stayed with me for most of my life. Now, I'm not saying that I'm not guilty of saying that I love something/someone when I don't, but I try my hardest to only say that it when I mean it. That's why it's always a shock to me when I see people just flinging around a word that is so meaningful and devaluing it into something that is just as meaningless as asking for a glass of water.
As I've grown up, I've seen people use 'I love you' in such a simple and wasteful way. For example, I see people saying that they love each other when, in reality, they actually hate each other. It's this fake love that's going around and quickly destroying the word, the phrase, and their meanings. People will say that they love someone so quickly, yet they never actually mean what they say. Love is defined as a strong affection for somebody, so it's something that shouldn't be used very often, but is. As I stated earlier, the fake love is the main culprit in this new devaluing of the phrase. Telling your best friend that you love them is one thing if you really do, but telling just one of your acquaintance friends that you love them is such an odd practice.
Wastefully using the phrase is one thing, but jumping the gun and telling someone that you love them when you don't in a relationship is another thing. Ironically enough, that's what inspired me to write this article. A very close friend of mine was in a relationship that only lasted two months and recently ended. He was telling me how she said that she loved him in the first week they were together, and how he followed suit later that week. I've been in a relationship for a little over a year now, and I didn't say that I loved my girlfriend until a few months in; so hearing how soon they said it to each other was an eye-popping moment. I asked him if he actually did love her, and his response was simple, "I thought I did."
My friend's response is the problem, outside of the fake love between 'friends', this is the main issue as to why "I love you" is being undercut and taken for granted. People believe that any simple feeling out the ordinary is love, I'm sure we've all felt it. Whether when you were 15 or now when you're in your college years, you've at one point believed that you loved someone. I know I did, I was sixteen, and I jumped the gun myself. At the time, I thought that i loved that girl, but in reality, it was just me convinced that I had fallen in love because I felt strongly toward this one person. People are always going to do this, and it's sad because it makes someone think that they are in love when they truly don't know what love is. It's bad for us now, and it's even worse for the younger generations who are going to fall into this luxurious trap.
The worst misuse of this phrase is when it is used for personal gain. When people selfishly say that they love someone just to gain something out of it is the worst possible defamation of 'i love you'. So many people do it, yet I have never been able to understand why. To take someone for a ride like that, to break a heart in such a fashion where you are fine but the person is destroyed; it's disgraceful.
To think that such a simple phrase could be everything, or nothing at all is something so unique. Maybe when your friend says that they love you, they don't mean it. Maybe you've jumped the gun on your relationship and said it too early. Maybe they don't love you at all, but they love something that you can give them. 'I love you' is slowly turning into a meaningless phrase, but it doesn't have too. When you tell someone you love them, make sure you mean it. Take it from me, it's important.
