This is a bit more rambling than most of my essays; I'm not trying to make any particular point, really, just thinking out loud about love; the feeling, the word, and how people in our culture react to someone saying the word.
I've had a lot of times in my life where I've wanted to say "I love you", but haven't because I was sure that people would freak out. That's what led to this essay. In particular, I have wanted to say that after casual sex a number of times; that's the image I have in my head for this essay.
There are three issues that seem interesting to me: what feelings inside me make me want to say it, what would I mean to convey if I said it, and why people freak out (or, more accurately, why I believe people will freak out).
When I say that I feel love for someone, I guess I mean this: if you take all of the various romantic relationships I've had, there is some feeling in side, a feeling of compassion and caring and desire to protect and probably other things, that I feel when I looked at each of those people during our relationships. It's not quite the same with any two of them, of course. The thing that is common to all of those experiences of feelings for my romantic partners is what I'm calling love.
This one's rather tougher. As I said before, I'm thinking particularily of casual sex situations, or even casual cuddling situations. I don't actually know what's going on in other people's heads, but I get the impression that other people don't ever get the urge to say "I love you" after a their first sex session with a new partner, especially a partner they just met.
I don't always get that urge, but probably more often than not.
It's possible that the issue is that love is very strongly tied in me to being protective.
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