Expressing love

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I'd like to be Randy again!

In order to get Randy again, my wife would have to think I'm Adonis again

You only experience reciprocal randiness? That's amazing!
aMust have saved you tons of frustration over the years!

Her Randiness, and mine, do not match--alas!

'Tis a tale often told. I wish I could say that I didn't know what it was like!

Wayhey, a conversation!

Quote timtowdi

Hmm... I do have a more general problem with "Big Words", i.e. abstract concepts that carry moral / emotional baggage and may be used as a kind of blackmail (i.e. you can't possibly be for X / against X or else you'll be a pariah)

I mean words like:
- God (not bashing religious people here - in my experience, atheists and agnostics are at least as guilty of mindlessly bandying this word around - e.g. "I have no idea what X is but it doesn't exist." or "I have no idea what X is but it's not possible to know if it exists" WTF?)
- Democracy (what are the defining criteria? Free elections? Rule of law? Separation of powers? What separates democracy from tyranny of the majority? Representative democracy vs direct democracy? Democratic People's Republic of Korea? Which one do you mean?)

My not so humble opinion is that, people who use one of those you should be able to define what it means to them, and their definition should be well thought out so that they actually agree with all its implications. Otherwise they should talk about something they actually have thought about, or STFU. And under no circumstances whatsoever should they demand that I use these undefined words too just because they want me to.

(end of rant)


I've made my big commitment years ago, and 100% intentionally - now married with 4 kids.


F***, reading over this I really am digressing all over the place. To me all these things are very closely connected but it'll be a small miracle if anyone here can understand what I'm on about. Thanks for reading anyway

I think I get what you were trying to communicate.

"Love" as a word is potentially a null pointer and you should not be required to use those.

Certainly "love" is a word loaded with multiple meanings. The "love" that is meant when someone says, "I love pancakes" is not the same love that I mean when I say I love my wife.

I don't have a problem with this. I understand that words have multiple meanings and this is not the same as saying they have no meaning.

There is a love that I have for close family members. The love I have for my wife is very like the love that I have for my children, or had for my parents, but with an element of erotic attraction that makes it categorically different.

The love I have for my pets is also somehow like the affection I feel for my children, but lesser because we are not friends and do not share the complicated language that connects humans.

The fact that there is more than one definition of "love" does not diminish or negate any of those meanings. The fact that there are similarities between the different kinds of live one can feel for family, a spouse or lover and pets does not mean I don't know what the differences are between those varieties of love or diminish any one of them.

When I say "I love you" to my wife or child, I am telling them that I feel an intense affection for them, care about them, wish them well, wish to protect them from harm, and want them to know that I have these intense feelings. When I tell my wife "I love you" I am also telling her that I am attracted to her and find her presence thrilling and viscerally exciting.

I could say all those things and elaborate on them, but it would take too long and this word is convenient shorthand for all that good stuff.

It's OK that people want to be told "I love you" -- they aren't asking for you to add null pointers to your speech. The request to be told I love you is a request to have that intense affection expressed and reinforced. This is not an unreasonable thing for one person in a close relationship to request of the other. It may be that such expressions of affection are a necessary condition for the creation and maintenance of such relationships for many people.

When considering what a word means, it isn't enough to know what it means (or doesn't mean) to you--you also have to know what it means to the other person. This is why a huge part of verbal communication revolves around establishing and confirming the meaning of the words and phrases used to build the communication.

TANGENT ALERT: When considering the meaning of words in this kind of exchange, I think it is worth taking into account the nature of poetic language and the reason people have and use a poetic sense. And, to shortcut this tangent, I'll jump right to a bit of Lewis Carol:

Almost all the words with known meanings here are not important: and, the, did, in. Only "Gyre" contributes a solid meaning to these lines--and yet the nonsense words are both interpretable and interpreted and have succeeded in conveying meaning.

BACK:
When I say, "I love you," to my son or daughter, I know what I mean. I think that they know, too. We have spent some hours talking about it.
When I say, "I love you," to my wife, I know what I mean. I think that she knows, too. We have been building a shared understanding of that meaning since the 1980s.

Wow Adamantium, I love this reply of yours. It's even got slithy toves in it!

But here's my favuorite part:

Does it really? In my environment I often get the impression that my attempts to clarify terms are seen as pointless hair-splitting and not particularly welcome. All too often I feel that the ostensible object of conversation does not actually interest my interlocutors much because it's just a small "tickbox" in some larger context (often a social game like "which herd do you belong to"?). Whereas I tend to take an interest in things either "for their own sake" or not at all.

I think that is contextual and bounded by the nature of the communication.

In the context of a significant romantic relationship, these issues are really important and worth putting a huge amount of time into.

In the context of a casual conversation about a specific topic among co-workers or casual acquaintances, the goal of the communication is probably not to make sure that each person knows with tremendous precision what denotation and connotation(s) are intended in the language of the others.

When I am talking with my wife, we may talk about feelings and our general emotional states for hours, sometimes watching the stars fade in the east as the dawn approaches before we have finished.

When I am talking with someone at work, they don't care about my precise meaning, and just want to know that I got the point. I may ask them a few more questions than most people because I sometimes don't get the point that seems obvious to others.

I am sometimes described as over analytical by people at work, though I am also known for coming up with perceptions that they would not and that they find valuable, so that makes my tendency to over-analyze more acceptable.

In general, if the people you are talking with see your focus on meaning as hair-splitting, they are probably right and you need to try to step back and recalculate their primary communicative goal--something that doesn't involve the clarity or specificity you are seeking.

I tell my wife i love her at least twice a day . NTs NEED to hear that ..
... I tell our kids i love them frequently .
It is what they need to hear.
Weather I find it comfortable doesn't matter ---I see it as part of the protocol to being a good hubby and dad.
just my thoughts