In our lives we tend to hear the term, "I love you," constantly throughout our daily lives, some more than others. Some would say, "Wow, hearing that everyday must be wonderful for our society." Well, I disagree. It seems that we actually have created what I like to call, "I love you culture." You may be saying, "what does that mean?" or "well that doesn't sound so bad." I have this to say to you:
"I love you culture" is simply put as society throwing up the term "I love you" at every possible chance they're given. They use the term whenever they feel like it and a lot of the time tend to not have a lot of meaning behind it. Here are my reasons as to why this could be a slippery slope.
1. We see it EVERYWHERE!
We see "I love you" on TV, in movies, in books, and hear it socially constantly! After a while it can end up as just something people say. It's kinda like having caffeine every day, it begins to lose its potency.
2. Do we actually know what we are saying?
We say "I love you" to everything; our phones, pets, friends, family, etc. We don't love all those things the same way though. The English language kinda screws us on this point. We have only one word that means love but it doesn't clarify the kind of love we feel. In Greek there are six words that are used to communicate different kinds of love. Actually having words that directly identify what your feeling makes things way less confusing to the people you're communicating with.
3. We say it out of habit.
A lot of the time we say it to people we see all the time just as a normal thing to say. It just slips out of our mouths without any thought on the matter. Have some intent and come up with different ways to tell someone you love them so they don't think, "Oh they're just saying that, they don't mean it."
4. We say it WAY too early in relationships.
We all know that we hear "I love you" in movies and TV two minutes into the character's relationships. It makes sense that that's what we in turn do in our real relationships. BAD HUMAN. Saying I love you early on in a relationship can make things escalate a lot more quickly than you intended them to. Also it can make your relationship seem a lot more serious than it actually is. Give it time to figure out what exactly the other person makes you feel. It may be love but what kind of love exactly? This also makes it soooo much harder with breakups because you have created in your mind that you were in love when it was just a small romance that wasn't going anywhere.
There are so many ways we can say "I love you" to someone without overusing and wearing out the term. Love is in our human nature but our language has restricted it to one word. Do more than that one word. Say "I cherish you," or "I treasure you." Think of how epic you'll sound and how fantastic the other person will feel knowing that you love them enough to express it in a different way. So go out and spread the love, but please, know what you mean when you say:
