So you found somebody that you’re really connecting with and you’re feeling like you love them. When should you first say, love you? If you’ve done it before first and you got burned by it, then I understand why you’d be afraid to do it again. So let’s unpack that. Welcome to my Broken to Brave podcast. I’m Donna Barnes.
It’s really exciting when you think you’ve found somebody that you’re falling in love with. but it can be really scary to say I love you for the first time, especially if your partner hasn’t said that they love you yet. So how are you supposed to know? And what do you do if you say it and they don’t reciprocate or that changes the whole dynamic of the relationship? Unfortunately, sometimes it does, which is kind of why I wanted to talk about it because I think if you, well, and honestly, I was watching “And just like that”, The new reboot of Sex in the City. And that’s what made me think of this. Because the one character said it and she didn’t mean to and she said it in the throes of intimacy. And then it really destroyed the whole relationship.
That’s what really gave me the idea to talk about it because yeah, I think in the throes of intimacy is when you really can feel like I’m in love with this person. I love this person. But that is just infatuation. If the only time you have the desire to say, love you is when you’re making love. That’s just infatuation. That’s lust. That’s great. Right. But it’s not really love.
Love is when you, first of all, on a parameter of time, you should spend a minimum of two to three months together before you really start saying, I love you. Sometimes you just have a great sexual chemistry with somebody, you can feel like you’re falling in love with them. But if outside of sex, you really don’t have that much in common or you really don’t do that much together, your chemistry is just so much that you’re so chemically attracted to each other. It’s mostly just having sex. That’s exactly just a lustful sex relationship. It’s not love.
Don’t confuse sex with love. I mean, look, they call it making love when it’s somebody that you’re in love with. Otherwise, it’s just sex, right? There’s sexual intimacy, there’s physical intimacy, and there’s emotional intimacy, and they’re all different. So in a truly loving relationship, saying I love you can really deepen emotional intimacy if you’re both on the same page with that.
Physical intimacy is really just things like cuddling or holding hands and being close to each other. ⁓ a lot of sexless couples that still cuddle and hold hands and sit close to each other but aren’t having sexual intimacy. I mean, a truly healthy, loving relationship has all three. There’s emotional intimacy, sexual intimacy, and physical intimacy, And it’s really harmonious. You get along well and you have commonality.
I just encourage you to be thoughtful about when you first say, love you, that you’re intentionally trying to move the relationship forward. If it slipped out in a moment when you didn’t really mean to say it, you can be honest about that. If it’s in the throes of intimacy and you’re like, wow, I didn’t mean to say that. Wow, I’m just so chemically attracted to you. I like didn’t want to get ahead of myself there. I’m sorry. You can take it back. I think it’s, it’s that important. It really is. Because you can really push somebody away from you if you say it too soon.
And if your partner says it to you and you don’t feel like you’re in love yet or you’re not ready for that yet, you can respond with, “Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for letting me know” is a good response. But actually it’s a good time to bring up if you’re not on the same page to then say, “Well, thank you for sharing that. I’m still exploring those feelings. I’m not saying that I’m not gonna get there, but I’m not quite there yet.” I think is a good way to handle that. Because true love, I think does really take months to grow.
True love is about really genuinely caring about your partner’s feelings and wants and needs and getting to know their whole lifestyle and their friends and family and the things that are most important to them. especially to, if you’re dating somebody who has younger kids, you should not meet those kids until you’ve been in this relationship for at least six months. Because as I’ve talked about before, most relationships only last three to six months. So why bring young kids into a relationship before you know that it’s going to last?
Because I’ll tell you, years ago, I’d met a guy in New York that I’d liked. you know, but I just was getting to know him. I had like two dates with him. And then he was telling me all about his seven year old daughter that had a birthday party and he invited me to his house in the Hamptons. And then we’re out driving around and we pull up to this house and there’s a bunch of kids running around on a front lawn and he jumps out of the car and this little girl runs up to him and goes, daddy! And throws her arms around him and he was like, hey, this is Donna. and I was really angry because, I mean, she was lovely and I was happy to meet her. She was very sweet. However, it’s the one and only time I ever met her because I wasn’t that crazy about him. I was trying him on and she met me at a birthday party. There was probably no harm in that. my point is, that, kids like me for whatever reason. So if, if now the kid really likes me, but now I’m never going to see you again, that’s unfair to the kid.
So without getting completely off topic, You can’t really love somebody until you’ve been completely immersed into their world and you’ve spent time with the people that are most important to them to get a deeper understanding of them. So when do you first say I love you? I think it’s when you’ve really spent a good amount of time together. Because if you say I love you within the first month and you’ve really just met and you’re just getting to know each other, that’s not love, that’s infatuation. And what you’d really say is I’m really infatuated with you, right?
Because that’s… what it is. It’s not love yet. And that’s why people get hurt. Really. I mean, people come to me for coaching all the time because they connected with somebody they thought it was amazing. They were swearing their love for each other and three months later and that person’s long gone and they’re devastated and they’re heartbroken. And if you don’t say, love you too fast, you can prevent hurting somebody, right?
Because going back to bad dates that I’ve been on, I’ve had a lot of people way too soon. Tell me I love you. And it turns me off, It shows me they have no boundaries. It’s a very big sign of lack of boundaries by saying I love you to somebody that you’re not, you don’t even know well enough to love yet, especially if you say I love you, people with lack of boundaries do say, I love you way too fast. Unfortunately, they can throw off how someone feels about you.
Studies have shown that if you know someone really cares about you, it’s easier to care about them. So if you’re now pouring it on strong and love bombing somebody and saying, I love you and I’ll be here for you forever and I promise you this and I promise you that. And now two months later, you’re going, yeah, maybe not. Which is more the norm. Right? Yes, there are the exceptions, but the norm is that a few months in, maybe your feelings are changing and you don’t now want to promise them the world. You’ve set that person up for heartache because they’re now allowing themselves to really openly love you because you’ve shared that you love them, which opens a whole other host of problems.
It’s a simple little word and I’ll tell you, like, you know, my family. And my dear friends that I consider family, I have no problem saying I love you. We say each other I love you all the time. But someone that I’m just getting to know, I’m not ready to say I love you until I really feel like I love you. And look, honestly, I myself have been in the arms of a man that I’m just crazy about and feel like I want to say I love you. But honestly, I know that that’s not love yet. It feels like love and it feels great and it’s heading towards love. I will say that. Anytime I’ve ever felt that way about somebody, heading towards love. But it’s not love until we’ve really been together for a minimum of three months and we’ve gotten to spend time in each other’s lives and tried each other’s lives on. I think that’s when you say, I love you.
And it should feel naturally, like in the episode of And Just Like That, it just came out and then she was really not happy about that, right? But I think that’s how it normally happens. Someone says it and they didn’t mean to say it and then they were hanging out there and they’re a little bit afraid. But if you say it in the right context, you should be pretty confident that your partner’s gonna say it back. Because if you’ve been in a loving relationship and spending a lot of time together and communicating well and you have a great commonality and you’ve been meeting each other’s friends and family, and you’re very much participating in a real loving partnership, then yeah, then I think it’s okay to say I love you. I think it’s appropriate to say I love you and your partner most likely feels the same way.
And you know, depending on how old school you are or not, I tend to default to the man and allow the man to say it first. I think is, you know, common for women to feel but of course in today’s world women are much more empowered and all that kind of stuff too but I am a fan of letting the man be the man. And I’ll tell you as a dating coach in Manhattan, I’ve had to coach an awful lot of very successful women to let their man be the man. Because, look, I’m guilty of this too. I can take care of myself. I do take care of myself. I’ve been taking care of myself my entire adult life. But I do like my man to be able to take care of me. And I do want to default to him to take care of me, to make him feel like the man, which I think is really important.
You can emasculate your man by not allowing him to be the man. So without getting completely off topic, who should say, I love you first? I think isn’t really a he or she or if you’re you know, both same sex, like whatever, I think it’s really about have we spent a lot of time, quality time together, getting to know each other, getting to know each other’s friends and families. Do we have great commonality? Do we have great chemistry? Is everything working? And most importantly, do you feel like your partner is getting closer to you, not pulling back? Because unfortunately, sometimes people feel like they want to say, love you because they feel their partner pulling back and they’re like, wait, where are going? I love you. No, that’s not helpful. It’s really not.
I think saying I love you should be because you’re moving the relationship forward in a different direction and you’re really, it’s a security thing. Knowing that your partner loves you gives you the security of feeling confident in that relationship and in your being together. So I don’t think it’s something that can be thrown around lightly and it should not be thrown around lightly. There is a lot of meaning to it within two people in a romantic relationship, much different than with family and friends. So think of it that way. being empowered and making a really conscious choice that it’s not just infatuation, that it is indeed love, and that you’re ready to move your relationship to another level by saying, love you to your partner.
If you’re going to say, I love you to your partner because you feel like they’re pulling away or because there’s something going wrong and you think that it could be helpful if they knew that you love them. Be careful because it might backfire. If you say, I love you too soon or say, I love you to somebody who is not falling in love with you. It will cause them to break up with you because look, I’ve had people come to me for coaching because they’re in a relationship with somebody that they’re not falling in love. They enjoy their company and they have fun with them, but they’re really not falling in love. And they don’t want to hurt the other person. So if you now say, love you to somebody who’s feeling that way, that they really aren’t all in on this relationship, it’s a good reason for them to say, you know what, I don’t want to hurt you. So I’m going to leave this relationship.
I think it does frequently end a relationship if you say, love you in the wrong context. Saying I love you really needs to be in the context of a really healthy, happy, loving relationship that is clearly moving forward. Because then saying I love you can really deepen emotional intimacy and carry it forward. But if it’s all really a physical intimacy relationship, there’s different kinds of intimacy. Let’s just face it, right? There’s physical intimacy, there’s emotional intimacy, there’s sexual intimacy.
It it is always appropriate if you’re feeling loved by your partner, which is the number one question to define the quality of your relationship, right? I’ve long said, “Do I feel loved?” is the essential question to know how good your relationship is. So if yes, you feel loved, then I think it’s okay to be the first to say, love you. So yeah, good for you if you’ve found somebody that you want to say I love you to. And if you feel really loved by them, then they might be thinking the same thing and they’re waiting to say it to you. And that’s a good thing. So I wish you love and happiness.
