Have you ever said "I Love You" to your new significant other and in return heard crickets? If you have, you know this might be one of the worst feelings. It leaves you insecure, worried, and also puts a lot of pressure/strain on the relationship.
If you are feeling love for your partner should you blurt it out immediately?
Unlike almost every other blog post, I am NOT going to give you a definitive answer. I am simply going to tell you what happens in both instances and let you decide which scenario works better for you.
First, let's discuss saying "I Love You" as soon as you are feeling it.
Positives:
1. No secrets, open lines of communication (Very Healthy Trait to have in a relationship)
2. YOU feel stress relieved by getting it off your chest (I bolded YOU because sometimes speaking is purely for the benefit of the person speaking, not the listener)
3. Saying "I Love You" is one of the best compliments you can give a person
Negatives:
1. The person does not feel the same way
2. When you say "I love you", you don't want to say it once. You want to shout it from the rooftops. If he/she doesn't say it back, you must likely are not going to be saying it again for awhile.
3. If the person is not ready to say it back and doesn't, for the next few weeks/months there could be immense pressure to say it or end the relationship.
I know many men/including myself that have had a woman say "I Love You" first have seen strain put on the relationship. The lack of the term of endearment being reciprocated caused conversations like "Where is this relationship headed and so forth" (Although a great conversation to have, imagine what you will feel when he says, "I want to get married one day but I am not there yet". Coupled with not saying "I love you", the average person would feel pretty insecure in the relationship and it could bubble over to questioning the stability of the partnership. Do YOU want to add this pressure?
Second, lets visit holding "I Love You" in to wait for your partner to catch up.
Positives:
1. No pain, insecurity from potentially not hearing the words back
2. Zero Risk
3. Keeping the relationship light and airy so the guy can eventually on his own terms get to feelings of love and more importantly wanting to spend the rest of his life with you. (Note: It is not easy to find love, but based on the divorce right and the amount of monogamous relationships that end it is clearly way harder to find and make a life partnership work)
Negatives:
1. Suppressing your feelings
2. Maybe he loves you too and his scared to say it too (stalemate)
3. If you are dying to tell someone how you feel, it is really hard to keep it a secret.
4. If you love him and he doesn't love you back, it may end a relationship that was never going to work anyway
Alright ladies and gentleman, that is the breakdown of telling your significant other, "I Love You" first. I hope you can weigh the pros and cons and make a decision that is right for you. I know after re-reading my pros and cons I am certainly leaning towards one direction being the correct approach.
Which approach do you think is better?
Do you remember when Kobe Bryant cheated on his wife with some 19 year old girl? He was accused of rape, was later found innocent, but was definitely guilty of adultery. Obviously, his wife, and mother of their 6 year old daughter was furious. In order to apologize, Kobe's grand gesture was a 4 million dollar diamond ring. The wife ended up staying with Kobe Bryant.
However, there is a lot more to grand gestures than meets the eye.
I believe in a given year, men and women are both looking for their love interest to accrue 100 points. But, men and women keep score 100% differently than each other.
Women will tally gestures 1 point at a time.
Men will tally gestures anywhere from 1 -20 points at a time.
Thus, when Kobe gave his wife a 4M dollar diamond he only earned 1 point. But, when his wife stayed with him after such a horrible event, I bet she earned 20 points. She had just proved to her man she is not going anywhere and she was going to fight for their family. I am sure this must have meant a lot to Kobe.
Now, how to apply this to your life?
LADIES - Find out what is truly important to your men. If possible find out how you can help him on that matter.
For example, it is really important that I eat healthy throughout the week. I told this to my GF and she came over on a Sunday to help me cook healthy meals for the entire week. (She earned 7 Points for that!)
MEN - What should you do? Little gestures often and consistently. Never Give up.
Your lady wants to know that you care about her. Whether it be a nice text message, little note on her pillow, flowers, chocolates, or after she has a bad interview, words of encouragement. If you really want to be effective, I would suggest learning what your woman's love languages are. Once you know how she wants to be loved you can make sure your gestures are meaningful to her.
I watched a social experiment on a YouTube where people were asked to rate their success on a scale from 1-10. Most of the scores ranged from 4 - 8. However, when family/friends were asked to rate their loved ones, almost everyone gave a 10. The lowest score was a 9.7.
What did I learn from this video?
I am confident and love myself. But, my loved ones perception of me is always going to be higher than I perceive myself.
How Can This Be Used For Your Benefit?
Most likely your perception of your loved ones is extremely high. You would probably rate their success a 10. Along the same lines of that, you probably think they have other amazing qualities. For example, smart, kind, funny, thoughtful and so on.
Since you perceive your loved one in such high regard, I propose a massive paradigm shift in the way you view arguments.
Arguments
Next time you get into a small tiff with a loved one and they offer their stance which is 180 degrees different than yours, assume they are 100 percent right.
What!?
What if they tell you, "gravity is not 9.8 m/s²"
It doesn't matter. If you believe the person is a 10. Maybe he/she is right about gravity. For the rest of the conversation, since you know your loved one is smart, kind, funny, thoughtful and so on, assume he/she is 100% right on this issue. Argue his/her point.
See what happens?
Would you rather be right in an argument that doesn't matter or would you rather be spending time together doing something fun?
