I Love You x 3
“I am in love with you. And I love you. And I like you.”
This is a phrase that my wife and I tell each other often; our relationship is built around these three sentences, in fact. The ancient Greeks had between four and eight separate words for love (depending on which historian/linguist you’re chatting with and how nuanced you care to be). These concepts were based upon the semantic differences of the quality of and the context in which that love existed. This is not a blog concerning linguistics so I will not get into defining each term, but suffice it to say that it’s an interesting read for the next time your flight is delayed, and you find yourself with some down time to fill by comparing and contrasting Eros, Storge, and Agape. The important thing here is to recognize that different types of love exist.
F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.” He was expressing that each relationship we have is unique and brings with it its own quirks and qualities, all of which are different, but all of which are but faces of the word that we understand (as English speakers) as LOVE. Additionally, for me, life experience over the course of the last 43 years have led me to conclude that love is not a binary phenomenon (speaking in a mechanical sense as in an ON/OFF switch or a coding “either/or statement”) the way a computer might express it:
love = input("Love? (yes/no): ")
if love.lower() == "yes":
love_state = True
else:
love_state = False
One does not simply love someone one day and then wake up the next and that love has completely dissipated without a trace (at least not without previous cause or circumstance). Love grows and love fades and all throughout those processes, love manifests as an entire spectrum of feelings and emotions and actions and behaviors.
“So what’s the point, Sasha?”
The point, dear reader, is that my wife and I recognized that for us, our marriage is built upon us loving each other primarily in three different ways, all at the same time. In looking at that dynamic, it opened a treasure trove of pathways and possibilities for me when I was writing my vows, so let’s unpack those three sentences and discuss how they might help you put words to feelings and craft some vows that resonate in the halls of your heart (and that of your beloved).
“I am in love with you.” – This is romantic love. In this context, when I speak these words to my wife, I am saying that love is a dynamic force that is acting upon me and through which I am acting upon my partner. This love means being fascinated by the other person and intrigued by who they are and who they are becoming. To be in love is to actively engage your person every day, delighting in how they navigate life, sharing in their interests, savoring the time spent together, and working at aligning your hopes and dreams with theirs, creating a future together. It is being playful and comfortable as a couple and sharing the deepest parts of oneself through vulnerability and trust. It’s about remaining curious about the other person and cultivating an ongoing desire to elevate your partner’s well-being. To be in love is to care as much about the happiness of your partner as you do about your own. This love also encompasses physical and sexual attraction, transcending the mere fulfillment of pleasure with the willingness to grow together. And it is just the best…
“I love you.” – This is the love of caring, effort, and affection. In The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the titular protagonist meets a fox with whom he wants to play, but cannot because he needs to tame the fox before doing so. Thus, he spends time and effort taming the fox, gradually growing closer to it as it grows closer to him, until one day they come to need one another; they end up taming each other. In this context, the phrase “I love you” recognizes that we care deeply for the person we love, because we have opened ourselves and had that affection be reciprocated. When I tell my wife that I love her, I am saying that I care about her and her life, the events thereof, and the choices she makes which affect her happiness and safety, because to me, she is unique in all the world. However, this love exists beyond a romantic context; I love others this way as well. I love my family, my friends, my mentors; they are all unique to me in the world as am I to them, and it is because we have taken the time to create memories and share common experiences together. We have all tamed each other.
“I like you.” – This is the love of enjoyment and pleasure. This is the initial stage of love which happens prior to the previous two forms. When you like someone, there is enjoyment in their company, or you take pleasure in particular qualities about them. They make you feel good. You like them because they do something for you. I have read many articles that deal dismissively with liking versus loving, relegating liking someone to being selfish as it is a shallow and surface-level emotion. These articles accuse the act of liking of only focusing on what the other person can bring you or do for you. There is some truth to this, though I will not moralize and say that this is always a bad thing. Real life does not always inspire the unending grand, selfless love of romantic poetry, and certainly not immediately. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that deeper love cannot happen without shallow liking first, but in the context of why my wife and I say this to each other, this semantic debate falls short in the face of another meaning. Think for a moment about your last family Thanksgiving dinner. It is entirely possible to love someone, but not like them or like spending time with them. Love has inertia, which is a double-edged sword. You can love someone out of habit, but liking them (and by extension who they are) means that you receive something from them; interacting with that person is a pleasurable experience. When you like someone you choose to have them within your orbit and in saying this to my wife, I am telling her that I enjoy who she is and take pleasure in being around her, because she is a source of joy for me.
These are only three examples of different kinds of love that I experience in my marriage and you may find others. The point here is that in writing personal vows to your partner, don’t just tell them you love them, but express why you do. Putting the work in to determining exactly why will only deepen your understanding of your relationship and crystalize your vision of the marriage and life that you wish to build with your person.
