I say it to my husband at minimum twice a day. Once before leaving for work, and sometime after I’ve gotten home from work.
I’ve said it to a good friend on rare occasion with the usual addition that makes it flow better for that situation “ya know, I love ya man”
I said it to my parents as a kid until I realized how fake it was and how much I didn’t really care for them. Now I have to say it to them on the phone to be polite (since they say it first) but lying like that is uncomfortable.
I feel incredibly awkward when saying it to my SO. It’s a cultural thing. Koreans never say “I love you” to each other. I cannot remember the last time my parents used the word love, either to me or to each other, and we/they have a perfectly healthy relationship. Even in K-pop dramas, which are all about the romance, the expression “I love you” is rarely used. In Western relationships, using the L word for the first time is usually a huge deal, but it doesn’t even come up in most Korean relationships.
I’m terrible at saying it out loud to anyone except my husband. We say “I love you” to each other multiple times a day, both out loud and by text. But I rarely say it to anybody else, even when I do love them very much. At the end of every phone call my mom says “Love you!” and I’m like “Okay bye” - thankfully she knows darn well that I love her more than life itself, I just have a hard time saying it out loud.
Of course I tell my cats and dog how much I love them every chance I get.
Yes, and panaccione, I love you.
I feel it and say it very rarely, pretty much only in deep discussions with my spouse and my daughter (IOW, not in casual conversation). I feel a certain amount of affection toward my siblings but nothing akin to love.
The rest of the world can go pound sand :D.
Yeah. My family is very expressive that way, and I’m the same with Husband, friends, etc. I’ve been in relationships with guys who have trouble saying it, and they didn’t work for a reason.
I’ve no problem saying it to my daughter, girlfriend, parents, nieces and the like.
Only to my wife. And the cats.
And the bartender. And the guy from AAA. And the plumber. And…
I never said it to my parents, outloud. Only on paper. I say it to my son if we are talking on the phone. I say it to my cats. I have a guy who is like a brother and when he ends our phone calls, he says I love you. I say, uhh mm ok bye. If my best friends says it, I will say it back.
I say it a lot. But it makes me sad to read about the people who love someone dearly, yet won’t tell them.
Somewhere on another message board, their loved ones are wondering why the hell they never hear it.
I’m not one to throw it around - if I say ‘I love you’, I mean I really do. My parents are big ILU users, and I’ve used it regularly throughout life to tell people I really care for them, but at the same time it’s not a super-important phrase for me. I was in a long relationship where we never really said it, those words made him uncomfortable. I didn’t care, we said other schmoopy stuff.
I hate how loaded the phrase is considered to be in the beginning of romantic relationships. To me, it’s not a big deal to say, or have someone say it. You shouldn’t feel obligated to reply the same way, and there’s no need to get freaked out if you’re not expecting it (IMO).
Now, I say it a lot to my BF, and he to me - those words make him happy, and I am happy to express affection in any way that someone likes, and to get affection in return. Also to my sisters, and my closest/oldest friends.
Not if you mean it, it isn’t overused. If you are saying it every five minutes, and to the cashier at the grocery, then yeah, overused. But there is nothing wrong, and everything right, with telling the ones you truly love what they just might need to hear in that moment.
I say it to my family all the time…less to my mom and brother, just because they are the least demonstrative, but they still get to hear it. I’m in a relationship right now where saying it would be a mistake because of someone’s irrational hang-up about the phrase, and it kills me to have to bite my tongue and NOT say it at the end of a phone conversation. I’m sure he knows how I feel about him, but I can’t quite be sure of his feelings for me. His actions say he loves me. But until he can spit out the words there will always be doubt.
All the time with my husband, and only lately with one of my sisters and my mother. We were not a demonstrative family, but I think we are all feeling mortality creeping up and since we live at considerable distances you never know if you are going to see them alive again.
I truly can’t remember it being said when I was a child. Understood, but not spoken. Got together with this guy I later married, and he was from a much more demonstrative family. Now I say it multiple times every day, to him, to our kids, and I bring my dad into that circle, which I think makes him happy, regardless of how my childhood happened to fall out.
I have difficulty with it. If someone says it to me, I’ll reciprocate. But I have a hard time going “first”.
I don’t know why I’m like this. My guess is that I’m afraid to show the emotional/vulnerable side of me…the side that seeks out people and wants to feel connected.
But I’m only this way with humans. I tell my cats I love them all the time. Maybe it’s because I know they don’t understand what I’m saying.
My husband and kids, all the time and quite easily. I cannot say it without feeling absolutely self conscious to anyone else in my family or close friends.
I don’t think I’ve ever used the phrase.
I don’t understand the reluctance to say it to someone you’re in an intimate relationship with, which is a trope in romantic comedies and dramas. In the movie Ghost, Patric Swayze’s character never said it to his girlfriend, always replying “Ditto” to her declarations of love, which made me not really mind all that much when the character was killed, because he was obviously a giant douchebag.
I tell my wife I love her because it’s true, I love her. What could possibly compel me to refrain from doing so?
ditto.