learning to bow out of the i-love-you competition

You know how this competition goes, the everyday game of “I love you”, “Oh baby, I love you too”.  OR, worse yet, “i love you“, “Oh baby, thank you.”  To which your brain, or, well, my brain, responds THANK YOU?!

I wrote about a similar issue in October, in the post the thing about texting, when I initially expressed the problem of giving with only the expectation of reciprocation. I stated then, as I am stating now, that when you give (sweet texts, love, gifts etc etc etc) only as a manipulation for reciprocation you are not only gearing yourself up for disappointment you are also becoming a seemingly annoying and needy girlfriend, lover, friend, sister, insert-relationship-here.

Jezebel posted recently on this issue, referencing a CNN article by Wendy Atterberry (the Frisky), in which Atterberry states that among the advice she will give to her daughter someday is the lesson of allowing the man in your life to say “i love you first”.  She writes:

I’ll give her plenty of other relationship tips, too, like how it’s perfectly okay to ask a guy out, to make the first move, to even propose, but when it comes to the “L” word, the ball’s in the guy’s court.

And while Atterberry acknowledges that this is seeming victorian-era advice, she also believes that saying I love you is more difficult for men, often taking longer, and that it really is beneficial to the relationship to allow the man to get there first emotionally.

Six months ago my mouth would have downright dropped at this advice. I would have been quick with the but that is just not feminist response, or perhaps even the well, I tend to date women so this just isn’t an issue for me reaction.  I would have said Atterberry was out of her mind. HOWEVER, as I am deeply involved in this process with myself where I am examining and learning learning learning why I react and respond the way I do, and, perhaps more importantly, as I move forward in an effort to better the relationships that already exist in my life, I find this chain of articles to be very interesting and compelling.

As I am the process of unravelling myself of a lifetime of codependency (eeek. hot topic.) and habitual expectation of reciprocation, I am constantly finding myself examining exactly this issue, because it seems to all be interconnected with my levels of self esteem and essentially, self love. WHEN you tell someone I love you for any reason other than bestowing that love upon them, making them feel good, with no selfish and unsettled feelings, I truly believe that it is one of the most important and amazing gifts a person can give. However, too often, we “love” from a deficit in our hearts or lives, reaching out and begging someone to fix that perceived broken part. We are not loving from a selfless and happy place, but rather from the black tunnel of fear and sadness and deepest inadequacy.  We love as an attempt to fix imagined problems or holes in relationships and in ourselves.

 The same as with the texting, when you give only to receive, and then find yourself not receiving ideally as you had imagined, you are not only setting yourself up for disaster, you are also attempting to control the natural flow of our relationships. This is admittedly difficult, often requiring daily brain retraining, but I do firmly believe that the most important aspect of intimacy (and personally the most difficult) is allowing your partner room to express themselves naturally in a relationship. This means removing your hands from the controls and sitting on them if you cannot keep them still at your side, and surrendering for just a moment to the different ways in which people express themselves, without judgment or fear or ego. Just because a person does not respond in a timely manner or in the way in which you would most desire them to DOES NOT mean that they do not love you, think you are sexy, find you worthy of partnership etc etc etc etc.

And probably, they will appreciate you and want to respond with higher frequency and more enthusiastically if you just give them a second to collect their thoughts and reciprocate within their own time frame. And you should, of course, grant this wonderful gift to yourself as well, allowing for time and space before off the cuff and perhaps insincere reciprocation.

That said, I do love you and thank you for reading.

xx.

Tagged as: cnn, competition, feminism, i love you, jezebel, love, relationships, sex, texting, the frisky, wendy atterberry