History: Implications Of 'I Love You'

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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).

What Love Feels Like To Me

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.

Why I Feel This Way When Other People Don't Seem To

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. Some of the strongest feelings of love I've had for someone new have very specifically been about "I'm holding this person that I'm attracted to, and I'm going to protect her from the world". I've had such strong protective urges, especially with small women, that I've been unable to sleep.

My being male, and mostly into women (or at least mostly into femininity), is almost certainly relevant here.

Another issue is the way I approach sex: I tend to be very focused on my partners. My own orgasms are ... really nothing special (partly due to nerve damage). I mean, I like them and all, but almost everybody has more interesting orgasms than I do. Especially with a new partner, I'd much rather pleasure them than worry about my own pleasure.

Women tend to take a long time to reach orgasm with new partners.

After an hour or two focusing solely on someone else's pleasure, is it really any wonder that I feel love for them? It certainly feels natural to me.

The Difference Between Feeling And Action

History

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09-May-2009 12:28 PDT rlpowell 6
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