With my husband, it was about a month in. We’ve been together almost 8 years.
Slight hijack—for those of you who are/were in long-term relationships in which those words were never said, did that both you? I can’t imagine being serious about someone for years and not saying it. Or staying with someone for whom I didn’t feel love.
I was head over heels in love before we even started dating (we hung out as friends for a few months when we first got to know each other). Obviously, I can’t speak for him, but he says it was pretty early on as well.
We danced around the L-word until nearly 6 months into the relationship, though - even then, when he said it the first time, it just kind of slipped out in the middle of a conversation so fast that I didn’t even realise quite what he’d said at first. I guess we just wanted to wait it out and bit and make sure it was the real mccoy.
I can imagine something like it.
Me: I love you!
Future Husband: I know (and not in the cool Han Solo way, either.)
Me: And?
FH: Thanks.
He got his act together eventually.
From her? 1 month. From me, a month after that. When I say “I love you,” I want to really mean it.
OK, true story.
I was seeing this woman, and we were putting up a little shed at her place. And of course, when you do these construction projects, the nails bend, the boards don’t fit exactly together, and so on, and I was explaining to her that you just have to curse in those situations, it’s part of the rules. Motherfucking nails.
Anyway, I was trying to hammer a nail in a particularly hamfisted way, and of course it bends, and of course I curse. She looks at me and tries to soothe me, “Don’t worry, I didn’t marry you for your building ability.”
Um, yeah. We’re not, you know, married. And we haven’t discussed marriage. Or said “I love you” to each other. Talk about your Freudian slips.
Anyway, I proposed to her about 3 months later, and we’ve been married for 8 years and have 2 kids. Now anytime I want to tease her, I just tell her I didn’t marry her for her [insert variable here] ability, and she turns a bit red.
My relationship with my SO began as a fuck-buddy sort of thing, where I was convinced that I didn’t want a real relationship. I resisted for months the idea of spending the night, leaving a toothbrush, him buying me meals, him taking me anywhere, etc. So, for us, it took months before we even decided that we were monogamous and exclusive. I would say, it took about a year, and I don’t even remember who said it first. Now, of course, we say it every day. We’ve been together, off and on, for about 2 and a half years now.
We met in early October, 05, started going out as friends and then dated in November and then for started living together in December two months later (although we kept both apartments for another couple of months). We got engaged a month later and married that April, so we’re now married for two years.
We started telling each other as soon as we moved in.
Since most people take things slower, I doubt this will be useful reference.
For her: about three months, after sitting on it for a bit because she didn’t want it to be too soon.
For me: longer; maybe about five months or so. Possibly even more.
About three weeks into the relationship, she mumbled “Hello, you” when I came in late one night and I panicked, and started spouting rubbish like “Umm… I’m very flattered, but I don’t feel ready to say that just yet” and the like. She just looked at me funny, and then said “HELLO, you” much more distinctly, and much amusement followed, not unmixed with embarrassment (and relief) on my part.
When she did actually say it to me, I had to clarify. “You didn’t just say ‘Hello, you’, did you? Right.” I didn’t feel ready to say that, and didn’t say it back. There was a certain pressure that I felt along the way, but I didn’t want to say something I didn’t mean, before I was ready. At some point, it just felt right.
I don’t know, right away, though. I told him I was falling in love with him the day after I met him. In his first email to me, he said he thought we should get married. We met at the end of May and got married at the end of September.
I was with ex-SO for a year before he told me he loved me… at that point, I thought maybe “this is what love is like” and told him I thought I was falling in love with him. We became engaged but never married. He ALWAYS told me he loved me - several times a day - and it annoyed the hell out of me because I believed actions spoke louder than words. I dont know, maybe I felt as though he was brain washing me into believing I loved him. Eventually I broke down and probably started saying it with a slight twitch. Fact is, it never came naturally.
It’s so much dfferent now. I said “I love you” just a few days after meeting the SO & it was incredible because I didnt feel pressured, it was a natural emotion. I wasnt worried if he felt the same, I just wanted to enjoy the time with him and I suspected he knew. And now - I melt like butter on hot bun when he says those words to me & I like saying them to him (it makes me squishy like jello) 
Gads… the only way I can come close to describing it - rent a copy of Dan in Real Life (which I just finished watching).
My story is nearly the same as CairoCarol’s: My SO said it to me 3 months and 12 days after our first date, but I was caught off guard and hadn’t really thought about whether I loved him. I said something back like “Wow, but I’m not sure I’m ready to say that back to you just yet: I do feel like I’m falling in love with you, but I just don’t know if I’m there yet.” Afterwards I felt so bad about not saying it back to him that I posted about it here, and the ensuing thread made me realize that I actually did love him already. So I said it back about 3 days later.
We’ve now been together for 16 months, and I’m moving in with him next month. 
Couple weeks in, probably. I fudged a bit, though, saying, “I think I’m falling in love with you.” He said it right back, in similar language.
By the time we’d been dating for 3 months, we were engaged and I was pregnant.
Got married when we’d been dating 7 months.
Our son was born 2 weeks after our ‘first date’ anniversary.
Our daughter was born less than a year later – a few weeks before our 2nd ‘first date’ anniversary.
We were speed-daters, I guess.
Oh, and we’ve been married for 22 years. This July 4th will be our 23rd ‘first date’ anniversary.
A month maybe? But he said it first. We were on the phone, saying goodnight (we talked right before bed every night) and he said, “Sweet dreams”, I said, “Of You”, he said, “I love you too.”
Freakin’ dingbat - he still doesn’t hear too good.
My first really serious relationship, she said it about 2 months in. I totally freaked out and didn’t know how to reply, so I just said “yeah, I know you do.” She cried herself to sleep that night, but I couldn’t bring myself to say those silly words. I wasn’t really raised in a family who was open with their feelings or anything… I can’t actually remember my mom or dad telling me they loved me or anything, although I knew they did. But still, it was hard for me to say.
Now, I subscribe to the Adam Carolla theory of “I love you’s”. Just say it. If someone says it to you, say it back. This “I want to MEAN it!” and “those words mean SO MUCH” ideas are totally silly. The words are basically meaningless, and its your actions that say how you really feel. If someone tells you they love you, there’s only 2 appropriate responses:
It didn’t work out between me and the first girl, but still, if I had it to do over I would have just said it back. I felt like crap for months knowing I made her cry and that I was so hung up over a couple dumb little words. Just say it.
I am going to have to disagree. I think love is a gift that should be freely given, and that an expression of love is a meaningful phrase that should not have a likewise reply as a necessary condition. When somebody gives a gift, that person would not demand a gift in return. I emphatically disagree that words are inherently meaningnless, and saying “I love you” as a way of not hurting some-one’s feelings cheapens the phrase. If you hurt their feelings in this instance, that’s something that needs to be talked about like adults, and you certainly shouldn’t have to break up with somebody if you don’t feel the same way in return at that very moment.
With all due respect, that’s the naive way that I treated relationships through about age 22.
The phrase “I love you” is already totally meaningless, and whether you say it or not doesn’t given it anymore special meaning. It’s not that I would have said it to not hurt her feelings, it’s that I really DID love her, but I wanted to assign way more meaning to that phrase than it was worth. Think about it like this…
I love my dog, I love my car, I love my iPhone, I love my dad, I love watching horror movies, I love my friends, I love Hot Pockets. I love lots of stuff in very different ways, and the fact that I was so hung up on not telling my girlfriend (with whom I’d had sex with, cuddled on the couch with, went on vacations with, and introduced to my parents) that I loved her was totally naive and silly.
Man, I’d be hard-pressed to think of 1 person these days who I willingly spend any significant amount of time with who I DON’T love in some way. So I just say it back when the event comes up. I recommend everyone do the same.
Yikes! No no no. I recommend the exact opposite, with a heavy dose of tact.
IMO, I would be MORE upset if I found out later that the words were said to spare my feelings. I would much much much rather have him respond with a gentle “I like you a lot, but I’m not sure I’m in love yet.” if he isn’t genuinely ready to reciprocate.
Let’s put it this way. I love a lot of the friends I spend a significant amount of time with but I’d probably feel a little awkward if one of them was to gaze meaningfully into my eyes and say those words… and I’d probably be doing a hell of a lot of damage control to explain that my feelings for them are strictly platonic. Would you actually reply with “I love you too” in that scenario?
Those three words should only be used if you genuinely feel that you are IN love. Totally different concept from the way you feel about your iPod or pizza pockets.
There is no way in hell that this statement is true. In the aforementioned example, you want to hear the guy say “I love you” right back. Anything else would severely disappoint you.
That scenario is pretty ridiculous and would never happen, but I imagine I’d say something like “Hey, right back at ya buddy!”
That said, the thread title is referring to your significant other, which is what I’m referring to as well. Obviously the rules are different if someone is telling you they love you who you have no feelings for. If some crazy psycho or purely platonic friend tells you they love you romantically, obviously no, the correct response isn’t always a “I love you” back.
I feel like if I care about them enough to consider them my SO, I care about them enough to tell them “I love you” if it comes up. And if I don’t, well, then I need to break up with them.