Sigh...emotions/relationships/love

whats with the posters that say they said i love you after a couple days???

that isnt healthy. i dont care how you justify it to yourself. that SHOULD NOT happen. good for you if you are still together but you cant say i love you after two days. there is no way to love or even know someone after 2 days. get real.
 
All I can add is that, at least here, saying "I love you" is too easy to take seriously.
It's something you can say without thinking much about it, or you can mistake the feeling for many other things.

I don't say it, love is not a word but ( supposedly) a feeling. You have to feel it.

And I also vote for someone to invent the "relationship standby" button in the future, not to cheat her, but to have a rest from all the quirks any relationship has.
Relationships can be really stressful, even more so if you're living together.
 
whats with the posters that say they said i love you after a couple days???

that isnt healthy. i dont care how you justify it to yourself. that SHOULD NOT happen. good for you if you are still together but you cant say i love you after two days. there is no way to love or even know someone after 2 days. get real.

Can you hand me that awesome "When it's healthy to stay I love you" chart you got that from, so officially know when it is healthy?
 
Think about this, first... what does that word even mean to you? You could very easily have no idea what it's supposed to stand for, or what you want, or what you think you want, or what you think she wants, or what you think she thinks you want, or what [ERROR: stack overflow], and that'll definitely get in the way. I can count on one hand the number of significant others who have heard me say that (even ignoring my prodigious counting abilities - fuck you all, six is *not* an actual number) and I don't know what it actually involves at this point. There may or may not be a made-for-TV moment, depending on what kind of drugs you're taking (and perhaps what you should be taking); there may or may not be some special, magical ability that allows you two to know infinitely more than what is actually being said (or maybe only one of you has that, in which case I wish you the best of luck with getting tired of exactly half of your things if you keep this up and it doesn't work out); there may or may not have been some vacation, some weekend, some evening, or some quick glance between sneaky nose-pickings where you thought "This is absolutely brilliant, and I want this to last absofuckinglutely forever"... if it's happened, you have your answer, and if not you may just be looking for things that don't actually exist.

The one thing that I'd approach *very carefully* is the advice given a few times above - you may think "I don't know what *I* want, but it isn't right for *HER* to not have Unicorn-Riding Strawberries-and-Cream-Shitting Prince Goddamn Charming so I should break things off now for *HER* sake", and you run into two big risks. The first is that you're dodging any issues that you may have - confront those directly, and WITH A HUGE SWORD BECAUSE THOSE ARE AWESOME AND ALSO I MAY HAVE BEEN DRINKING. The second is that you may not be able to read your mind, and this gets its own paragraph because my sentences are too big and my Return key is feeling lonely.

There are *very* few things that C.S. Lewis got right. The one that I'm thinking of is probably in the Screwtape Letters (and otherwise is bound to be an utter fabrication on my part) - it is possible to try too hard to be too polite, too kind, too considerate, or too caring and, in doing so, become even more of a burden. You may think that you owe it to her to end things early and hope that she has better luck, but a few things could get in the way of that...

(1) You may be completely deranged and actually in love with her. These things are rumored to happen.

(2) You need more time to figure out what's going on, and you may be shutting out some details that would make your decision easier by worrying too much about what you want and what you want for her. Knowing nothing else of past efforts, the phrasing in your first post doesn't exactly have the ring of an expert on the subject, so at times you'll need to think about your situation and at other times you'll just need to shut down and see what happens.

(3) You may be a project. Some women like men they can view as projects. (Every single one of my informed significant others falls squarely into this category, for example.) Since you've discussed these things, don't be hasty about your next move - whatever she does next could completely change the situation, especially if she cares deeply for you, and this is - ignoring all else - a great way to figure out how she'll respond to tough situations. If the way that she handles your openness doesn't make you comfortable, you have an answer - it can be safely assumed that you know a fair amount of what she's done and what she values and all that nonsense, so that's out of the way, but you now have the opportunity and the order to poke and prod to see how she responds to whatever is bothering you... and you had damn well better take advantage of that.

Finally, be very careful about any advice contained above, below, and everywhere in between. If you're asking, you clearly have issues (Surprise!), and (fortunately) as you said a few posts in you're not breaking up with her after the responses you had at that time, but I'd take much more advice about what to look for than anything else. Everyone here is working on a very limited amount of information, so unless you're going to fix that you should try to poke holes into everything you read (this included) before making any big moves. (Also take into account that I'm dead inside, devoutly single, and completely deranged, so I shouldn't be trusted with anything but making mistakes. Whee!)

Jeff
 
Jeff, thanks for taking the time to post some of your thoughts. I think a lot of the problem does have to do with my perspective of love. People say you'll know it when you experience it, but I'm the type of guy who is usually paranoid, doubting, second guessing, expecting the worst, etc. On top of that, I also put it on a pedestal and to an extent, I see it as unachievable. When someone is ready to use the L word, they are, in my opinion, giving a vow and putting everything they stand for behind it. They are 100% sure about it, and it will NEVER change under any circumstance, over any period of time. To go against such a vow, would be equivalent to becoming faceless. Chances are that I won't ever be in that position during my lifetime.

I thought I loved someone back in high school to college years and she drove me crazy at many levels, really. Although we were close friends, we never dated as she had a boyfriend the whole time and I ended up going to a psychologist to try to gain understanding of the situation. I concluded that I had simply created everything so perfectly in my head. What an illusion! That really messed me up though.
 
Can you hand me that awesome "When it's healthy to stay I love you" chart you got that from, so officially know when it is healthy?
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Can you hand me that awesome "When it's healthy to stay I love you" chart you got that from, so officially know when it is healthy?

No kidding. Anyone who tries to argue shit like that is probably more full of shit than the person who used the L word after a few days imo.
I've only ever been in love one time, and I realized then that the times I thought I was in love I really wasn't.
So as cliche as it sounds the reality is that you WILL know when you do fall in love. Sadly there are no guarantees for everyone. I loved and lost and as much as that pains me I can at least say that I did fall in love once. It was a beautiful thing.
 
They are 100% sure about it, and it will NEVER change under any circumstance, over any period of time.
Seems like you've put it on too high of a pedestal allright... Times change, people change, you change, so your feelings about a person change as well. Doesn't mean you shouldn't go for the foreverandever-stuff, but try to do it day by day, if you get what I'm trying to say.
 
I think you know you really love someone, the day you feel that you would give your life for that someone, it may sound cliché and stupid. but love can make you do stupid things, at many levels. it really takes a lot (time, effort, you call it), but that doesn´t mean you don´t feel nothing for that person. one thing is to care about someone, and other thing to really love someone.
 
Can you hand me that awesome "When it's healthy to stay I love you" chart you got that from, so officially know when it is healthy?

There is not a chart. but two days is certainly not enough time to experience love. if you think it is then its just a self fulfilling prophecy of what you want it to be.
 
Imho true love can't be felt within a matter of days. In a few days you can only feel horny and comfy, kinda. :p True love, imho again, is when people are married for like 60 years and are still holding hands when they're walking or something. Also, the word love is "heavy". Maybe tell her you're the closest I've ever come to love someone, then cry and burst out I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!! :p Then have crazy sex and be happy.

I love beer :|