Right, my mission to get questions for the men on as many pages as questions for the women... is a hard road... equality... am I right?...
My next question is... Men, be honest... how comes men often say "I love you" first? Have you always meant it when you said it? Do men just say it? Is it a manipulation technique? Aren't women supposed to be the hopeless romantics lol but every couple I know men have said it first, or is it the hidden alpha, has to make his move first or appears ... less masculine? Or maybe its the *** talking who knows? Oh right, men should know.... so... lets hear it lads!
I have some baggage with that ominous sentence, unfortunately, mostly because the first woman that I ever said "I think I might love you" to responded by saying "Oh well." I thought I really did, too, but that incident obviously sent our relationship reeling off into a vortex that it never recovered from. We were both young, but not
that young. Then when we broke up later, she told me "there was a time I thought I loved you." I responded, "well, that was true for me at one time, too, so we appear to have missed each other." When I said those words to her I no longer loved her. She did just about everything to suck my love for her out of me by the time we finally parted ways (I wasn't completely innocent, either, of course, but had she told me she loved me I would have
never responded with "oh well."). So that sentence became very loaded and a little bit poisonous for me. I was terrified to say it to anyone again for years, because the first and only time I had ever said it to someone it completely destroyed the relationship. My first wife then told me continuously, even, I found out later, while she was sleeping around on me. After that experience I grew to hate and distrust the sentence and it took me years again to ever say it anyone. Though I'm in a very stable and loving marriage now, I still distrust the sentence and it doesn't always give me a good feeling. It was kind of ruined for me.
Given all of that, it should be obvious that I take the sentence
very seriously. I have always used it with extreme care and I never threw it around aimlessly because I want it to actually
mean something. It's easy to just say "I love you I love you I love you I love you" over and over again but never actually mean it or live up to it. Sort of like Christians who think that going to church is all that they need to do to be good Christians. Those words can get taken for granted and worn out unless they're treated with some respect, because, in the end, they are just words, but it completely depends on how you treat those words. If you treat them like trash, then they will be trash. If you give them meaning, then they will have meaning. They mean so much to me that I've become terrified of them a little and I've had a very hard time trusting people with them. Whenever I've said them, I've
completely meant them, to the point that I ensure that I'm living up to them. To me, saying it represents an oath. You pledged your love to someone, so
live it, dammit. I've never used the sentence to manipulate or mislead anyone else, because I wouldn't want anyone doing that to me (guys have admitted to me that they've said those words to get women into bed - and some guys I've known have confused love and lust, so they just mispoke - they should have said "I lust you."). Sadly, I don't have a great history with those words, which has made me paranoid about them. But, in the end, I would rather
show love than just say it. Saying it without corresponding action means pretty much nothing. But for me
saying it is doing it, so I'm
very careful about saying it. And, though I don't say it often, I hope that I
show it constantly.