Love

It’s struck me of late that, glorious as it is, the English language fails when it comes to love, or more precisely love’s different forms. There have been many times recently when I’ve needed to say “I really care for you”, or even “I care more deeply for you than anyone else, ever”, but I’ve not wanted to say love because of the slightly deeper connotations of “the perfect partner” and “the one I’m sure I want to spend the rest of my life with”.

But then, if I can’t use the word love what can I use? When they are upset and crying and I want to reassure them how do I tell them that they are the most special person in the world to me? How do I show my affection in our parting greeting? I can’t say loudly “I love you”, so what can I say? By the time I’ve yelled “I really care for you, more than anyone else, you are so special to me!” I’d be hopping down the road after the bus.

I remember a children’s TV program, I forget what it is called. I think it was on ITV and featured a family in their kitchen that had been jettisoned into space. Anyway, it featured a family and some humanoid aliens who obviously weren’t entirely up to speed on human culture. One of the male aliens had decided he had fallen for one of the family’s eldest daughters. He knew it wasn’t love, it was merely a passing crush, but he didn’t know what to call it. He realised that he “quite liked” her, and thus he had “fallen in quite like” with her. As humorous as it is, it highlights the lack of facilities our language provides for describing our feelings for someone.

And then there are friends. There are a lot of friends I can safely say that I love without getting into a tricky situation. It is understood love is meant in a platonic manner and just symbolises my care and connection to them as a friend. However, there are, perhaps unfairly, a few friends I wouldn’t say that too. Again, it may be unfair to say so but I do worry about how they may perceive such a statement. I know for a lot of people if they said it to me it would play in my mind when it was a perfectly innocent comment, so why should I allow it to play on their mind? But then, the problem comes again with how to express my platonic feelings for them.

Of course, I am also worried that if I continually spout the word love around when talking to my friends it will begin to lose meaning. The more I say I love my friend the less special the word is when I wake up next to my wife in years to come.

There are other languages, perhaps with roots more passionate than ours some people may say, that do have different words for different kinds of love. Loving cheese is not the same as loving a friend, and loving a friend is not the same as loving a partner, and indeed loving a partner is not the same as loving a spouse. I’d like to be able to have different words when talking about them, just so that my girlfriend doesn’t think she is on a par with a lump of cheese.