‘I love you’ and how to be real
There are ‘three little words’ every guy knows a girl just loves to hear. Love is something which has managed to retain a sense of mystery because despite all our scientific knowledge we cannot yet quantify. We know the chemical states it evokes and the ability it has to make us feel that suddenly the world is ours but we do not know how it can so easily and for no apparent evolutionary benefit subvert our sense of reason and make us behave in ways which are intrinsically irrational and very, very human.
Because we do not understand it we have mythologised it. Wrapped round the instinct to mate which drives us all, it has become the gilded wrapper used to sell almost everything from Seer’s lingerie to De Beer diamonds. Those who follow my blog know that I often use deconstruction as a path to comprehension and the fact that even saying ‘I love you’ can be seen as the quick route to the shedding of a girl’s clothes makes it my kind of subject.
So, let’s take our scalpel of comprehension to the belly of this beast and see exactly which way the entrails lie. ‘I love you’ is so important because:
1. Men have commitment issues – every girl knows that while it’s easy enough to say ‘I like you’, ‘I want you’, ‘I want to have sex with you’, the three little words which come with the same undertones put the entire relationship on a different footing. Suddenly the man has had (theoretically at least) the time to truly analyse his feelings for another person and visualize a monogamous future where she is the centre of his world.
2. It makes things more official – yes, it’s not quite up there with the ‘Will you marry me?’ but it is the first step to the path that leads down the aisle. A declaration of love explains besotted behaviour and sudden urgings. It makes the man (traditionally stronger) suddenly appear vulnerable, his feelings (masked by evolutionary biology and 50,000 years of struggle for survival) are suddenly in the open, his motivation crystal clear and his will and drive suddenly fragile.
3. It shifts the balance of power – up to the moment of declaration the whole game between the sexes thing is a game. Yes the man chases the woman and she likes being chased (sometimes more than she likes being caught) but the moment the ‘I love you’ card is played she now has to make a decision which, in many ways is binding. Upon it rests her freedom, ability to choose bed partners and the way her life will develop.
4. It becomes the ‘key’ to her body – men do not like to feel like they are out of control when it comes to sex and they do not like to feel that they somehow need to ‘ask for it’ in a way which makes them feel beholden to someone. In less refined days the inherent imbalance in power between men and women compensated for this. In our more enlightened world ‘love’ is what the man offers in order to get sex.
5. It has become part of our conditioning – while we are all driven by a sex drive which makes us equal participants in an always-on game of attraction, desire and physical satisfaction, it is the notion of love which legitimises it. Dressing in a revealing manner and going to look for sex puts a woman in an entirely different footing to dressing in a revealing manner in the hope of attracting a mate who can become her life partner.
We live in a world where the media, books, films and newspapers have elevated love into the ultimate pay-off of life whilst collectively working to devalue its currency. Love can be, quite easily, become the coin we use to purchase attention, affection, sex and companionship. It has become easy to say and even easier to write in our online relationships and contacts and way too easy to talk about.
The thing is that love is one of the few remaining mysteries. Its physiological effect upon us is a by-product rather than the end result. It can power us to do impossible things and it can transform us, allowing us to break through limits and personal barriers and discover new aspects of life. When truly felt it simply makes life worth living.
Because we can now say it so easily it becomes all the more important that we do not. If we want to be truly real, when it comes to saying those “three little words” we should be as circumspect as if we were paying a fortune for each word, signing a contract with our lives. Because all the other issues governing contact between the sexes do not fade away and because love is not found always, a willingness to be real about love itself, inevitably leads to awareness about who we are and why we do the things we do. What we then decide to do with that awareness defines what we become and, by association, what we make of the gift which is the world we live in.
