Funny thing about language. Once you say something, it’s out there. It can’t be taken back or reversed. The direct or indirect implications of a statement can’t be fixed or corrected or even amended. Once a thought, spoken with words, is verbalized, it becomes powerful and potentially volatile.
Consider a situation in which a person you are dating tells you they love you. For most people, this is a pivotal moment in the relationship, loaded with all sorts of emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical implications. And usually, it is a joyous moment.
My experience as a writer, a writing teacher, and an analytic engager with culture, has taught me that a person’s language and spoken utterances should be weighed and considered carefully. Therefore, it takes me awhile to process something that was said – I consider how the statement was said, when it was said, in what context it was spoken, and why that statement might have seemed appropriate to the other person at that time. I also weigh my own reaction to that statement – how and why I reacted a certain way externally and internally, whether my reaction was rational or extreme.
All of this careful consideration of spoken language has a purpose – to help me grow as a person, understand more about human nature and myself, and to guarantee that I don’t make snap judgments about people and situations. This tactic has served me well over the past decade, protected me from questionable situations, and helped me give good people more of a chance to enter and become part of my life.
Back to “I love you.” The timing of this particularly loaded phrase is crucial to its success or failure. For example, after dating for several months, and developing a progressively stronger bond with someone that begins to transcend physical desire, one person feels comfortable enough to utter this pivotal phrase, thus exposing the rawest and most vulnerable part of themselves to scrutiny (and worse, rejection); the response from the other party is telling. If the other person instantly responds sincerely with “I love you, too,” then much rejoicing results and the relationship enters a new and glorious phase. If, however, the response is silence, or confusion, or “How could you love me, you don’t really know me,” then the negative and volatile impact of that single utterance becomes a barrier to progress. Because now imbalance and the awareness of that imbalance takes center stage and can become an insurmountable obstacle.
Now consider what might happen if, for example, the man tells the woman he loves her and is sure of it…on the second date. (I’ll wait for you to stop hyperventilating.)…..
And starts talking about marriage and moving in and the future during the first week of dating….
This is the situation I recently found myself in. So while some women might run screaming in the other direction, I paused for thought. I verbally (and gently) rebuffed, directly established my boundaries and comfort zone, and gave him a chance to live in the moment and not bring it up again.
He did bring it up again – differently, but obviously. So I thought some more and re-established my boundaries and reiterated my aversion to implied references to the future. And to every verbal exchange, he would agree, and then proceed to bring it up again and again in direct and indirect ways that became so persistent that I realized his emotional attachment to me was unhealthily strong for being such a new relationship (three weeks). What to do, what to do.
I looked it up…in a book. Of course. Books have provided so much guidance to me that I have come to rely on them for answers or help with thinking through problems. And it turns out, this intense and fast emotional attachment is a psychological condition that has been studied – it’s called Anxious Romantic Attachment. And the 33 question test for it (in a scholarly psychological book, not on some web site) revealed to me almost everything this very nice and well-meaning guy had done to a very high level…within three weeks. A high score on this test indicates or reinforces that the person has a “tendency toward anxious romantic attachments.” And every scrap of affection given reinforces the person’s already elevated sense of attachment…and they are very hard to dissuade.
Armed with my own discomfort and this information, I thought some more and reflected on this man’s words and actions over the past three weeks, in hopes that I would discover a point of misunderstanding – meaning, perhaps I misunderstood something or misinterpreted a statement or situation. But the more I thought and considered, the more I realized that this wasn’t a scenario I wanted to participate in.
Language in relationships is so important, reinforced by actions. So I’m not really a believer in that old stand-by phrase, “Actions speak louder than words.” Very often, I find that words scream a mouthful of intention that can’t be ignored or corrected by the sweetest actions. Sometimes when someone you care about says something at the wrong time, in the wrong context, even with the most honorable and honest intentions, the power of language renders the situation irredeemable, completely cut short of its potential had those words not been uttered.
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