Reply #4: Never

[ForrestGump]

For some reason, it's always been very hard for me to say. "I love you": I just couldn't say it. Our family never said it when I was growing up, but we all knew it...it was just a given, even though we were never touchy-feely at all back then. We were not American, either...Americans seem generally -- massive blanket statement, I know -- to be more open with people (and more touchy-feely), even strangers, and that's one of the first things that a person from overseas will remark on. That and all the food.

So I have always had a hard time saying "I love you" to anyone. And it seemed alien to me how, for example, my wife and her family could throw it about as basically a (as you say) "how ya doin'" or other salutation, especially when they've just been engaged in some knock-down, drag-out argument (as was often the case). I don't doubt that they loved each other, but tossing it out as what seemed an an automatic response, when saying goodbye or whatever, just seemed to me to somehow devalue the notion of actually loving someone. That is, of course, to my way of thinking, anyway, given my difficulty in using the word "love" at all, let alone between "I" and "you."

My wife and I naturally developed a kind of private language -- not exactly baby-talk, but words derived from the phonetics of the words we were substituting for (as a side benefit it made negotiating with people, or steering each other out of a sticky or potentially-harmful situation, much better because only we knew what we were saying and we could mutter the words almost inaudibly or say them as if we were just laughing or "hawing" and still understand) and one word we sort of naturally evolved was a derivation of "I love you." I was set, then...I could say this word in place of the dreaded "I love you." And I did. The decline and end of our marriage was honestly caused by my wife's behavior, and lack thereof, but I admit that it might have helped if I'd said "I love you" a few more times...again, as with my nuclear family, I just sort of assumed it. With the end of another relationship after I was separated from my wife, someone to whom I never said once those words even though I very much felt it and was sure she knew it, I learned that "I love you" is something to be said, not something to be assumed.

The bottom line is that I still have a block against those three little words but I will say it if I feel it and if I feel it I will (a) say it all day long, if given half a chance and (b) mean it with full meaning each and every time. Unfortunately, life is not always as tidy as we'd like and there'll be those to whom I say it, mean it, and still part from. I guess I'm more like everyone else, now, in that. Sad parts and all, I remain a reluctant "I love you"-sayer, but I'll wear my heart on my sleeve if I feel the truth of it...it took me long enough to get here.