Premature Love-Declaration.

When is the right time to say: ‘I Love You’? When do you know that you actually do? Are there different kinds of love at different points of a relationship?

Now I am not saying I am a Ted Mosby and declare: ‘I Love You’ on the first date, but I have been known to make drunken declarations to boyfriends that I perhaps haven’t been with long enough to justify such an outburst. I blame this, and most of my social problems, on musicals. In musicals you either have love at first sight like Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in ‘American in Paris’ or indeed Michael seeing Stephanie for the first time in ‘Grease 2’ (don’t judge me on that second example). I used to call musicals ‘those marrying films’ when I was little, I had a love of MGM Golden Era musicals rather than heavy going plots. This fact has coloured my view of the speed of a relationship – you had to meet, fall in love, have a few hiccups (you know, like a crazy farm hand trying to set you on fire in, ‘Oklahoma’, or being incredibly underage in ‘Gigi’, or falling in love with a girl that is really hundreds of years old and living on a magical floating village in Scotland that only appears every 100 years) then reconcile and marry within 90mins. Of course I jest, it’s more like a week in the timeline of the plot (unless it’s ‘Showboat’ where everyone is screwed for decades). But needless to say I have always loved the idea of a whirlwind romance and I do get swept up in my own emotions.

I asked some friends how long they waited until they said they loved their partner and I had a range of answers, one said it took 3 months, another 6 and one was more like 8 or 9 months. I did have one friend say that their partner said it after about 6 weeks and he was surprised but not put off, but that he told them: “as long as you really mean it, say it all you like, although I’m sorry I can’t say it back yet” – it took him 3 weeks more.

What was also interesting in getting people to think about when they first said: ‘I love you’, they then thought about how their feelings had grown and developed since that point – that although the initial lust and excitement that makes you want to declare your love fades into comfortable coupledom, their feelings were now deeper and different to the first time they said, ‘I love you’. One even questioned if they had in fact ‘loved’ the person at the time they first said it because their feelings were so much deeper now.

My Mum used to upset me as a little girl by telling me she wasn't 'in love' with my Dad any more but she did love him. She equated being 'in love' to 'soppy, romantic feelings' that 'can't last' but it fades to a stronger love, a love of friendship and companionship for your partner in the truest sense of the word. In other cases when this first flush of love fades sometimes the rose-tinted glasses come off and you are left with something, sadly, not quite as beautiful.

I love you, maybe

So, how do you pin-point it; when do you know that you truly love that person? Do you love in different ways throughout your relationship? Is it when you realise you can’t stop thinking about them, or when you realise they are the ‘the one’, or only when you think you would die for the person?! My musicals background should make me think it is something you only realise and declare in dire circumstances, after overcoming great obstacles and always done with a huge romantic gesture. But upon hearing one friend tell me she declared her love for the first time quietly as a whisper to her half-sleeping boyfriend mid-cuddle, there are perhaps better ways to do it than as a result of a near-death experience covered in sweat and tears with an orchestra playing in the background.

It is hard to know when to tell the other person too, you may know them very well, but it is the one area that you are never 100% of how they will react and what impact that may have on the status quo of your relationship. I have sometimes found myself swallowing an ‘I love you’ to a partner, even when I have just meant ‘ahh you’re amazing, I love you!!’ as an exclamation of happiness that I may say to any friend. Is this perhaps going a bit far just to not rock the boat?

When I was a teenager I used to test the waters with boyfriends with the good old: 'I luv you' - 'Luv' didn't seem as intimidating as it's properly spelt cousin and they couldn't get weirded out by you saying 'love' as it would be them over-reacting as you didn't actually say it...?! Now wonderful smart phones give us the ability to use emoticons to express how we feel without committing to strong feelings. I have friends that test the waters with little pictures of hearts rather than saying 'I love you' or indeed '*picture of a heart* you' - this can be made even less threatening by turning the 'you' into a 'u'. Just never put an 'I' at the beginning, that is going too far obviously - that is the line clearly. PLUS, if they get weirded out you can just saying you were doing the Paris Hilton type thing where they literately say 'I heart' such and such. Stops them in their tracks. Starting to think that I over-think this stuff.


I don’t think I can form any answers to my musings but I know whenever I get a bit tiddly I will profess my love again to whoever is nearby; I just hope at some point I mean it and that the other person says it back. And that it isn’t a lamp post.