I never understood why the English language has such a loaded weight for the words "I love you" until I understood that there isn't a middle ground between "I love you" to a partner, a friend, or...
I never understood why the English language has such a loaded weight for the words "I love you" until I understood that there isn't a middle ground between "I love you" to a partner, a friend, or a close relative.
It would be interesting to understand linguistically and sociologically why that happened.
In Italian we have several different grades of affection that can be expressed with different words, the most common one being simply "Ti voglio bene" that roughly translate with "I care for you" and is the most common thing you will hear a relative say to one another, or close friends say to each other. It removes the romantic part of "Ti amo" (I love you) keeping all the positive feeling one could express towards another without the expectation to be reciprocated.
Maybe it's just that the English language simply wrap too many possible meaning into those words and it would benefit from people trying to expand the language.
I mean, English has the words "I care for you." in it and plenty of people say that to each other. We've also got "I got your back" "anything for a friend" and so many more phrases that...
I mean, English has the words "I care for you." in it and plenty of people say that to each other. We've also got "I got your back" "anything for a friend" and so many more phrases that essentially say "I have a care for you that I will express by sacrificing my time or effort... But we're not fucking at the end of the night."
So, essentially the author appears to want people to say I love you more because they want to hear more people say that they love them?
I'm perfectly fine with keeping the I Love Yous to romantic partners only but I'd be lying if I said I'd never said I love you to someone pulling my ass out of a literal or figurative fire.
Much like Japanese is highly dependent on the tone, the American "I love you" can be the "oh man I fucking love you!" when your buddy shows up with a sixer of your favorite beer, the "I love you, mom," to a parent or a whispered "god damn, I love you." After a night of passion.
You’ve answered the speculation in your example, with the English translations. English does have the capability, both in words and phrases, to express the various types, aspects, and degrees of...
You’ve answered the speculation in your example, with the English translations. English does have the capability, both in words and phrases, to express the various types, aspects, and degrees of “love”. Love, appreciate, care for, be proud of, be completed by, admire, respect, need, seriously addressing a friend as brother/sister, and so many more. Whether people bother to use them is another story. The simplifying/streamlining/“dumbing down” of language in every day use is a very old and long running point of contention.
This type of perspective I think helps break me out of the box of not realizing the limitations of things when you just grow up accepting them, like knowing that other languages have the ability...
This type of perspective I think helps break me out of the box of not realizing the limitations of things when you just grow up accepting them, like knowing that other languages have the ability to express things in a way you can't in a different language, considering I only know one language. Just one of those things sometimes where you accept what is presented in front of you or around you and don't necessarily realize that there's other ways of being.
Makes me wonder how or if a language can develop that, or if it's different since the invention of the press and various things since then that have increased availability of documenting the language and increased the usage of it now that near everyone can "publish" something.
Of course there's the whole social element as well, trying to introduce any new word or phrase can meet resistance on all kinds of levels. It just really makes me wonder what it would take to make it happen, or if it does happen in some more recent cases and I don't realize it and it's just super slow and rare. Obviously there's slang and what not but I'm talking things that last or persist through generations.
Edit: Just wanted to add, I have of course encountered other elements of language where I know things are expressed in different ways or may not have exact meanings in translation, but normally I just think along the lines of 'So in English it just is longer and more words to express mostly the same thing' and only see it as an efficiency problem, but I didn't really consider more functional or personal aspects like sometimes there's just a cutoff where if you can't say something succinctly, you just might not say it at all, such as being able to tell your friends you love or care for them without having to contextualize it properly to account for how the words come across.
Thanks for the great explanation! There’s something similar happening in German, which I always semi-ironically considered an issue with Germans being less emotional but if an Italian says so,...
Thanks for the great explanation! There’s something similar happening in German, which I always semi-ironically considered an issue with Germans being less emotional but if an Italian says so, well…
In German “ich hab‘ lieb“ is the affectionate yet non-dramatic way of saying “ich liebe dich“, the latter sounding like a key scene out of a romance novel, not something you’d end a phone call with. You can say „ich hab’ dich lieb” (it’s basically just the casual grammar version, I wouldn’t know how to translate it) to a romantic partner or as a parent to your kid, it’s a quick, casual sign of affection. Never would anyone casually declare “ich liebe dich” in privat nor in public, unless a balcony or a boom box are involved.
I do use it with extremely close male friends now. I've got probably three, maybe four at a stretch. Lost my Brother four years ago this week, genuinely wish I'd have got to tell him I love him...
I do use it with extremely close male friends now. I've got probably three, maybe four at a stretch.
Lost my Brother four years ago this week, genuinely wish I'd have got to tell him I love him one last time. Though one of my favourite memories is of us having a few too many and those words being used.
Good times. Tell your friends you love them, they're not around forever.
Eros tends to be translated as “attraction” — the root form of “erotic.” Agape is usually called “sacrificial love” and is what Jesus most often used in the Greek New Testament. Philia is often translated as “affection” or “the love of friends.” And so, it’s easy to imagine life can be thus divided. I love my wife (eros), I love my neighbor (agape), and I love my best mate (philia). It’s love in boxes.
From a straight cis male's perspective: I wonder how much of this relates to alexithymia in western society. Particularly among my male friend groups, I've observed that we have trouble...
From a straight cis male's perspective: I wonder how much of this relates to alexithymia in western society. Particularly among my male friend groups, I've observed that we have trouble identifying, and definitely expressing, a wide range or intensity of emotions. This includes love: We definitely would not say "I love you" to each other. Of course, there are many reasons we'd be hesitant to do that; upbringing, individual preference, etc. But I wouldn't be surprised if, culturally, the combination of "friendship love" not commonly being explicitly expressed and alexithymia among men contributes significantly to this.
More generally, I've also observed that we have many ways to circumvent saying "I love you" to people other than our family/partners. @AgnesNutter gives plenty of examples. It seems like we're definitely communicating the emotion to our friends when we do those things, but we'd prefer to not be explicit about it, and leave the magnitude of what we're saying up to context/interpretation. I think it's a reflection of our (western, American, whatever; this is my experience, YMMV, etc.) culture.
I do think there's a difference between having the unspoken understanding of "My friend told me they appreciate me, that means they love me, they're just not saying it" and just outright saying "I love you". I think the article captures it well. To me, having to do the former is stifling.
I never do. I alwaya tell my friends I love them. Even if it's something as simple as saying goodbye after dinner, or coffee. Always. I never know when that door might close and never open again....
I never do.
I alwaya tell my friends I love them. Even if it's something as simple as saying goodbye after dinner, or coffee. Always. I never know when that door might close and never open again. Life is way to fucking short to not tell your people you care about them.
For me, It all started when I had one of my younger friends take his own life. It was a huge wake up call for me. The man was 22 years old and barely out of school, he must have been really struggling. One night he was having friends over and I just fucking no showed like a fucking asshole. Never saw the man again. Couldn't even tell you what the last thing I said to him was. Still eats at me to this day.
Ever since. I will always tell my friends I love them and I will move mountains to make sure I see them and go to their events and just check on them. If I can't, I will send a text and make sure I can reschedule. Is it hard? Sometimes. But I will be absolutely damned before I let my friends down like that again.
I’m very similar, I’ve lost a lot of people starting very young and I always tell my close friends I love them. Whenever we get off the phone or say much of a goodbye I’m sure to say it. You never...
I’m very similar, I’ve lost a lot of people starting very young and I always tell my close friends I love them. Whenever we get off the phone or say much of a goodbye I’m sure to say it. You never know when it’s gonna be the last time.
“Imagine that close friend from earlier. Now picture a moment of looking them in the eye and saying, earnestly, “I love you.” It’s as cringeworthy as it is socially unacceptable.” I think I must...
“Imagine that close friend from earlier. Now picture a moment of looking them in the eye and saying, earnestly, “I love you.” It’s as cringeworthy as it is socially unacceptable.”
I think I must move in very different circles to the author because this has never been true in my friend groups (including between the men).
Regardless, I do somewhat agree with the whole premise. I say somewhat because I think as long as you’re showing this feeling with actions, the actual words aren’t always necessary. I also think a lot of other things we say give this same meaning: “I appreciate you”, “you’re a fantastic friend”, “thanks for being here” etc. The article focuses on the words, and I think it could have been improved by broadening this to talk about showing affection in general.
But like I said, I do generally agree. It would be nice if everyone felt comfortable to express this feeling to their friends
That is a flawed premise. I am not "repressed" and I do not "hesitate" to say "I love you" to my friends. I genuinely do not wish to do so, and this causes me no emotional pain whatsoever. That...
That is a flawed premise. I am not "repressed" and I do not "hesitate" to say "I love you" to my friends. I genuinely do not wish to do so, and this causes me no emotional pain whatsoever.
That does not mean I don't love them, but the way our relationships function includes other forms of sentimental expression which I favor.
The premise that I must express myself through the extroverted guidebook is profoundly misguided, authoritarian, and hostile. It is an expression of what I like to call "the dictatorship of the extroverted".
I am not a broken extrovert that is unable to express themselves, I am a fully functioning introvert with a rich and complex emotional life. Introversion is not a disease.
Introversion has nothing to do with this really. It’s only about whether you feel revived or drained by being around people. What you’re expressing is more like being reserved or private, I think....
Introversion has nothing to do with this really. It’s only about whether you feel revived or drained by being around people. What you’re expressing is more like being reserved or private, I think.
Regardless I mostly agree. The words themselves aren’t necessary, and I feel like the author is using that as a proxy for talking about affection in general. I’d have liked an article more like that! I do think it’s beneficial for most people to feel appreciated and loved, and there are some friendships (particularly hetero-male, I think) which are so based around teasing and “banter” that it can be quite hard to tell whether there’s anything they actually like about each other. Perhaps this is very fulfilling and I’m totally wrong, but it doesn’t feel as though it would be
I should've been less ranty, but this pisses me off. Introversion is not a well stablished scientific concept, but I do believe it is meant to include those that are less overt in their self...
I should've been less ranty, but this pisses me off.
Introversion is not a well stablished scientific concept, but I do believe it is meant to include those that are less overt in their self expression.
And yes, me and my friends express affection profusely, but we don't go around saying "I love you" and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I never understood why the English language has such a loaded weight for the words "I love you" until I understood that there isn't a middle ground between "I love you" to a partner, a friend, or a close relative.
It would be interesting to understand linguistically and sociologically why that happened.
In Italian we have several different grades of affection that can be expressed with different words, the most common one being simply "Ti voglio bene" that roughly translate with "I care for you" and is the most common thing you will hear a relative say to one another, or close friends say to each other. It removes the romantic part of "Ti amo" (I love you) keeping all the positive feeling one could express towards another without the expectation to be reciprocated.
Maybe it's just that the English language simply wrap too many possible meaning into those words and it would benefit from people trying to expand the language.
I mean, English has the words "I care for you." in it and plenty of people say that to each other. We've also got "I got your back" "anything for a friend" and so many more phrases that essentially say "I have a care for you that I will express by sacrificing my time or effort... But we're not fucking at the end of the night."
So, essentially the author appears to want people to say I love you more because they want to hear more people say that they love them?
I'm perfectly fine with keeping the I Love Yous to romantic partners only but I'd be lying if I said I'd never said I love you to someone pulling my ass out of a literal or figurative fire.
Much like Japanese is highly dependent on the tone, the American "I love you" can be the "oh man I fucking love you!" when your buddy shows up with a sixer of your favorite beer, the "I love you, mom," to a parent or a whispered "god damn, I love you." After a night of passion.
You’ve answered the speculation in your example, with the English translations. English does have the capability, both in words and phrases, to express the various types, aspects, and degrees of “love”. Love, appreciate, care for, be proud of, be completed by, admire, respect, need, seriously addressing a friend as brother/sister, and so many more. Whether people bother to use them is another story. The simplifying/streamlining/“dumbing down” of language in every day use is a very old and long running point of contention.
This type of perspective I think helps break me out of the box of not realizing the limitations of things when you just grow up accepting them, like knowing that other languages have the ability to express things in a way you can't in a different language, considering I only know one language. Just one of those things sometimes where you accept what is presented in front of you or around you and don't necessarily realize that there's other ways of being.
Makes me wonder how or if a language can develop that, or if it's different since the invention of the press and various things since then that have increased availability of documenting the language and increased the usage of it now that near everyone can "publish" something.
Of course there's the whole social element as well, trying to introduce any new word or phrase can meet resistance on all kinds of levels. It just really makes me wonder what it would take to make it happen, or if it does happen in some more recent cases and I don't realize it and it's just super slow and rare. Obviously there's slang and what not but I'm talking things that last or persist through generations.
Edit: Just wanted to add, I have of course encountered other elements of language where I know things are expressed in different ways or may not have exact meanings in translation, but normally I just think along the lines of 'So in English it just is longer and more words to express mostly the same thing' and only see it as an efficiency problem, but I didn't really consider more functional or personal aspects like sometimes there's just a cutoff where if you can't say something succinctly, you just might not say it at all, such as being able to tell your friends you love or care for them without having to contextualize it properly to account for how the words come across.
Thanks for the great explanation! There’s something similar happening in German, which I always semi-ironically considered an issue with Germans being less emotional but if an Italian says so, well…
In German “ich hab‘ lieb“ is the affectionate yet non-dramatic way of saying “ich liebe dich“, the latter sounding like a key scene out of a romance novel, not something you’d end a phone call with. You can say „ich hab’ dich lieb” (it’s basically just the casual grammar version, I wouldn’t know how to translate it) to a romantic partner or as a parent to your kid, it’s a quick, casual sign of affection. Never would anyone casually declare “ich liebe dich” in privat nor in public, unless a balcony or a boom box are involved.
to be fair to English though, at least it doesn't have the massive room for confusion that is "Freund" and "Freundin".
I do use it with extremely close male friends now. I've got probably three, maybe four at a stretch.
Lost my Brother four years ago this week, genuinely wish I'd have got to tell him I love him one last time. Though one of my favourite memories is of us having a few too many and those words being used.
Good times. Tell your friends you love them, they're not around forever.
It is a small beautiful article, give it a read.
From a straight cis male's perspective: I wonder how much of this relates to alexithymia in western society. Particularly among my male friend groups, I've observed that we have trouble identifying, and definitely expressing, a wide range or intensity of emotions. This includes love: We definitely would not say "I love you" to each other. Of course, there are many reasons we'd be hesitant to do that; upbringing, individual preference, etc. But I wouldn't be surprised if, culturally, the combination of "friendship love" not commonly being explicitly expressed and alexithymia among men contributes significantly to this.
More generally, I've also observed that we have many ways to circumvent saying "I love you" to people other than our family/partners. @AgnesNutter gives plenty of examples. It seems like we're definitely communicating the emotion to our friends when we do those things, but we'd prefer to not be explicit about it, and leave the magnitude of what we're saying up to context/interpretation. I think it's a reflection of our (western, American, whatever; this is my experience, YMMV, etc.) culture.
I do think there's a difference between having the unspoken understanding of "My friend told me they appreciate me, that means they love me, they're just not saying it" and just outright saying "I love you". I think the article captures it well. To me, having to do the former is stifling.
I never do.
I alwaya tell my friends I love them. Even if it's something as simple as saying goodbye after dinner, or coffee. Always. I never know when that door might close and never open again. Life is way to fucking short to not tell your people you care about them.
For me, It all started when I had one of my younger friends take his own life. It was a huge wake up call for me. The man was 22 years old and barely out of school, he must have been really struggling. One night he was having friends over and I just fucking no showed like a fucking asshole. Never saw the man again. Couldn't even tell you what the last thing I said to him was. Still eats at me to this day.
Ever since. I will always tell my friends I love them and I will move mountains to make sure I see them and go to their events and just check on them. If I can't, I will send a text and make sure I can reschedule. Is it hard? Sometimes. But I will be absolutely damned before I let my friends down like that again.
I’m very similar, I’ve lost a lot of people starting very young and I always tell my close friends I love them. Whenever we get off the phone or say much of a goodbye I’m sure to say it. You never know when it’s gonna be the last time.
“Imagine that close friend from earlier. Now picture a moment of looking them in the eye and saying, earnestly, “I love you.” It’s as cringeworthy as it is socially unacceptable.”
I think I must move in very different circles to the author because this has never been true in my friend groups (including between the men).
Regardless, I do somewhat agree with the whole premise. I say somewhat because I think as long as you’re showing this feeling with actions, the actual words aren’t always necessary. I also think a lot of other things we say give this same meaning: “I appreciate you”, “you’re a fantastic friend”, “thanks for being here” etc. The article focuses on the words, and I think it could have been improved by broadening this to talk about showing affection in general.
But like I said, I do generally agree. It would be nice if everyone felt comfortable to express this feeling to their friends
That is a flawed premise. I am not "repressed" and I do not "hesitate" to say "I love you" to my friends. I genuinely do not wish to do so, and this causes me no emotional pain whatsoever.
That does not mean I don't love them, but the way our relationships function includes other forms of sentimental expression which I favor.
The premise that I must express myself through the extroverted guidebook is profoundly misguided, authoritarian, and hostile. It is an expression of what I like to call "the dictatorship of the extroverted".
I am not a broken extrovert that is unable to express themselves, I am a fully functioning introvert with a rich and complex emotional life. Introversion is not a disease.
Introversion has nothing to do with this really. It’s only about whether you feel revived or drained by being around people. What you’re expressing is more like being reserved or private, I think.
Regardless I mostly agree. The words themselves aren’t necessary, and I feel like the author is using that as a proxy for talking about affection in general. I’d have liked an article more like that! I do think it’s beneficial for most people to feel appreciated and loved, and there are some friendships (particularly hetero-male, I think) which are so based around teasing and “banter” that it can be quite hard to tell whether there’s anything they actually like about each other. Perhaps this is very fulfilling and I’m totally wrong, but it doesn’t feel as though it would be
I should've been less ranty, but this pisses me off.
Introversion is not a well stablished scientific concept, but I do believe it is meant to include those that are less overt in their self expression.
And yes, me and my friends express affection profusely, but we don't go around saying "I love you" and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.