From: ae498@yfn.ysu.edu (Dawn Bott)
Subject: "I-love-you" essay (finally!)
Organization: Youngstown State University/Youngstown Free-Net
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 04:03:23 GMT


Sorry this took me so long to post...had some software troubles.

Enjoy....please feel free to send me your comments, I truly
love this essay!!!!

"I-Love-You"
by Robert Solomon, PhD
from his book:  Love, Emotion, Myth and Metaphor

"I love you."
What does that mean?  Of course you know, but tell me.
A description of how I feel?  Not at all.
An admission?  A confession?
No, you don't understand, after all.

"I-love-you" is an action, not a word.  It is not a short sentence.
Of course it *looks* like a sentence, made up of words, but
sentences can be transcribed and transformed.  "I-love-you" is
more like the word "this" or "here"; it make sense only when
spoken in a very particular context.  In writing, in a letter,
it has meaning only to you, and only while you can still imagine
my speaking it.  To anyone else, and after a while to you, it
means nothing at all; like the word "here," just sitting on the
page like an old coffee stain.  Hardly a word at all.

"I-love-you" has no parts, no words to be rearranged or replaced.
"You-I-love" is more than merely clumsy, like "Me Tarzan, you
Jane."  It is something like staking a claim.  "John loves
Sally," when said by John to Sally, is absurd.  "I-love-you"
allows for no substitutions, no innovations.  It stands outside
of language.  It says nothing.  If it is misunderstood, it cannot
be explained.  If unheard, it has not been uttered.  And when it
is heard, it no longer matters that you didn't mean to say it
in the first place, that you "just blurted it out."  You did
it, and it cannot be undone.

"I-love-you" does not *express* my love.  It need not already
be there.  Perhaps I didn't feel it until I said it, or just
before.  But then, in a sense, I didn't *say* anything at all.

One of the perennial misunderstandings about language is the
idea that all sentences *say* something; words refer and phrases
describe.  But language also requests and cajoles, demands and
refuses, plays, puns, disguises as well as reveals, creates as
well as clarifies, provokes as well as invokes, performs as well
as informs.  We do things with words, in words done by the late
Oxford philosopher J.L. Austin.  With words we make promises,
christen ships, declare war, and get married, none of which
would be possible without them.  Our sentences mean what we *do*
as well as, or rather than, what we say.  They bring things
about as well as tell us what has already come about.  And
the meaning of "I-love-you" is to be found in what we *do*
with it, not what it tried to tell us.

If we so easily misunderstand language and persistantly
refuse to look at love, then of course we will miss completely
the significance of the language of love, if that is, it is a
language.  Or is it, as [Roland] Barthes suggests, a *cry*?
"I-love-you" mainly makes a demand.  So when I say it you
react -- not "How curious that you feel that way" but rather
"But what do you want me to do?"  Its meaning is aimed at you,
to move you. (a "perlocutionary act," Austin called it.)

I say, "I have a headache," and you say "Poor Boobie."  Perhaps
you kiss my forehead, and I'm most grateful.  But if you say
"Me too,"  I don't think, "What a coincidence"; I feel
slighted.  You've misunderstood me.  Suppose I say, "I love you,"
and you kiss my forehead.  I'm offended.  That's not a reply
but an evasion.

I say "I love you," and I wait for a response.  It can only be
one phrase:  "I love you too," nothing less, nothing more.
Perhaps "Me too,"  although it is ungrammatical and a serious
confusion of pronouns, but it is also less than the proper
formula.  If you say "Je t'aime," you have not done it either;
instead you are showing off.

I could be silent and just love you.  And perhaps you'd know.
I don't have to say, "I'm so angry with you," when I've been
yelling at you for twenty minutes.  I don't say, "I'm sad,"
when I'm crying.  And yet I feel compelled to say,
"I love you," even when it's obvious that I do.  "Nothing says
I love you like `I love you.'"  But it is more than that too,
more than something said.

The power of words, or at least certain words, sometimes is
awesome.  "I-love-you" is a magical phrase that ruins the
evening.  Or changes love into something more, even when it
was love before.  It is not an announcement, no R.S.V.P.
No "if you please."  It *demands* a reply; in fact, it
*is* a demand.  And a warning, and a threat.  It is an
embarrassment, first to me, but soon to you.  It makes
me vulnerable, but you are the one who is naked.  I am
watching your every move.  Counting the fractions of a second.
What will you do?

"I love you"; "what a terrible thing to say to someone."
Terrible indeed.
"Tell me you love me."
"What are you expecting from me? You know that I love you."
"Then say it."
"I don't want to say it."
(The evening's already lost, but I pursue.)
"If you love me, then why not say it?"
"Oh.  I don't know; it just changes everything."
"How can saying what is true change everything?"

But it does.  "I-love-you" doesn't fit into our conversations.
It interupts them.  Or ends them.

"I-love-you" is language reminding us of the unimportance of
language, language that destroys language.  It is language
without alternatives, without subtlety, like a gunshot or the
morning alarm.  And then it's gone, not even a memory, and
has to be done again.

But once said, it can never be said again.  It can only be
repeated, as a ritual, an assurance.  Not to say it, when
it's never been said, is no matter, a curiosity.  But not to
say it, once said, is a cause for alarm, perhaps panic.  One
commits oneself to the word, and to say it again.  What
else follows?  Perhaps nothing.

Barthes says it is "released," but I say "shot out," like a
weapon.  Released like an arrow, perhaps.  And if I make
myself vulnerable in saying it, the real question is what
it will do to you.  I'm still watching you.  Still counting
the fractions of a second.  What will you do?

I say "I hate you," and you quite rightly ask "Why?"  But I
say "I love you," and "Why?" is completely improper.  A
reasonable question, but a breach in the formula.  You have
turned the weapon back onto me, so of course I reply
indignantly, "What do you mean? I love you, that's all."
And I again await your reply.  A second chance, but no more.

I say "I love you," and you answer, "How much?"  What are we
negotiating?  Perhaps you are saying, "Well then, prove it."
And, having said the word, I am bound to.  Nevertheless, your
reply is insufferable.  You're acting as if I actually *said*
something which can now be qualified, quantified, argued for
and against.  But I didn't.  I just said, "I love you."  And
that is, in terms of "How much?" to say nothing at all.

"I-love-you":  a warning, an apology, an interruption, a plea
for attention, an objection, an excuse, a justification, a
reminder, a trap, a blessing, a disguise, a vaccuum, a revelation,
a way of saying nothing, a way of summarizing everything, an
attack, a surrender, an opening, an end.

I say "I love you," and I no longer remember a time I was with
you when it was not said.  And we will never be together again
without it.

-- 
  The moment we indulge our **  Talk not of wasted
  affections, the earth is  **  affection -- Affection
  metamorphosed.            **  is never wasted.
      --Emerson--           **     --Longfellow--