I see/hear this phrase all the time, in real life and on the dope, in connection to people talking about family members. People will start to tell a negative anecdote about someone they are related to and preface it with “I mean I love him and all” which in the context of what they are saying translates as “I feel socially obligated to state that I love this person but actually don’t really”.
Why is it so difficult for people to admit that they don’t love family members? Why, because we share more chromosomes with them than the wider population, do we have to love them? Because a lot of the time that’s what it is. Why is it so easy for people to admit they don’t particularly like their siblings/parents because of the way they behave or things they say/believe to the point of making it clear they have quite a lot of antipathy towards them, but then need to say “but of course I still love him/her”. Do you? Do you really?
I have quite a large family and I don’t love any of them with the exception of my mother, step mother and two younger brothers (I don’t think I even love my father, for a variety of reasons). I have nothing in common with my extended family and hardly ever see them, why do I have to love them?
It’s not hard for me to admit that I LOATHE my Brother’s wife.
There are relatives whom I genuinely do love, but have reason to use that phrase.
Such as my step-grandparents… One of them was in Africa and Palestine (After the European WWII ended, but while troop activities hadn’t finished) and he is the ULTIMATE winding-weaving-off-on-twenty-tangents-grandpa-simpson talker. I was at their house a few days ago and I stood… STOOD for an hour and a half politely, patiently listening to one of his stories. I could feel my feet dying, I was getting tunnel vision… how can an eighty year old man stand for this long and I am close to collapse!
And invariably it starts when you were just about to go and do something, such as use the toilet. It’s like a trap… there are no gaps in which to make an excuse to escape.
And his wife’s “I love them but…” is her constantly offering cake… and INSISTING when you refuse.
Be careful of projecting your feelings about your own family onto others.
Yes, I really do love my family. Even when I complain about them. Sometimes the people that are closest to you are in the best position to get on your nerves just due to their proximity and the emotional ties you have.
One of my mottos in life is: “You can love someone even while finding them annoying as hell”.
My brother and I have gotten into some very nasty fights on occasion. Over all, we don’t talk much and don’t spend much time together unless it’s part of a family event. I’ve certainly complained about him to other people. But, in spite of all that, I still love him.
One of the key ways to tell if you really love someone or not is to ask yourself how you’d feel if someone else picked on that person.
If someone else was talking badly about my brother or trying to hurt him, I would defend him ferociously. If he got sick, I’d be worried about him. If he died, I would grieve and feel I had truly lost someone important to me.
So I guess that’s why I would try to make sure someone hearing me talk about him gets the “I mean I love him…” bit - I really do love him even when he infuriates me. Just because we don’t always get along or like each other doesn’t change the fact that blood is thicker than water.
I totally don’t get statements of the form “I love him, but [goes on to describe the behavior of an utter waste of space].”
I don’t like my father, because he’s a complete jackass. And I certainly don’t love him.
I don’t think family should automatically get a free pass just because they’re related to us. My mother has tried to pull that on me: “He may be an asshole, but he’s still your father.” My response was, “Well, he may be my father, but he’s still an asshole.”
Yeah, we have some real Norman Rockwell moments. :rolleyes:
Scarlett has understood the point I’m making. I’m not saying that you must completely love and revere your family on one hand or feel nothing for them/hate them on the other. It’s more that people seem to think that being related to someone means you owe them love and affection no matter how badly they treat you which I don’t understand.
lavendarviolet, I don’t for a moment people all feel the same way as me, I’m just saying maybe it’s more common for people to feel this way than they let on.
Could it be also an automatic saying, to put the person they talk to more at ease?
A very (very) simplified scenario:
Someone you’re not very familiar with (be it at work or other) starts ranting about a close family member, and ends with: “I love 'em but want to kill 'em” to a person that just ends with “i want to kill 'em”?
There are many people I love, but each of them have at least one habit/personality trait that drives me absolutely frothing-at-the-mouth mad. When speaking about that trait, it’s customary to throw in that “I love them but…” preface to indicate this is annoying but accepted as part of the whole package, rather than a full-blown deal breaker. Not everyone I speak to has enough insight into my relationship with that person to tell the difference.
Hell, I just used this phrase earlier today in the MMP. I don’t doubt that everyone there knows I’m madly in love with The Boy 99% of the time, but it’s still nice to make it clear that I’m venting about an annoying thing he did, and this isn’t necessarily a precursor to a breakup.
I used this phrase just recently to speak to a close friend’s girlfriend about the close friend.
He is super close to me, and has been there for me through thick and thin. He is damn near family at this point.
And he has a single trait that drives me absolutely batshit insane about him. Makes me so angry I could just spit. It doesn’t come up often, and so it really is an accepted part of the whole package, as Mahna Mahna says. But when this trait comes up, either him doing it or someone and I talking about it, I can go on a hell of a tear about it.
I was actually quite tame about it, today. But that is the use I find in the phrase. “I love X dearly, but when he gets starts doing Y, I see red.” Sometimes, there are quirks (or more than quirks) that don’t make you stop loving someone, but really irritate you or flat-out piss you off.
There are other reasons to use it, that don’t include effective lying, but that’s the main one.
I don’t recall saying it about anyone I do not care for, even if I am for some reason “supposed” to care about them.
Yes. There are people I say this about and that’s exactly what that means. Hell, my own mother, whose love for me I have absolutely zero doubt about, has said the same of me, and even told me, point-blank, that she doesn’t really like me sometimes. I don’t blame her, either . . . god knows I’m a fuckwit at times.
Aesiron You were a ‘fuckwit’ to me at one brief period many years ago, during which time I didn’t like you at all. (I think you had pitted me) but at all other times your posts make you one of the dopers I like the most.
One of the expressions some of us in my family use is, “I love him/her…but I don’t always like him/her.” That is, we know the person has some really good qualities and family takes care of family, but we’re not blind and don’t think they’re perfect.
Part A is that love is supposed to be unconditional, so maybe the person who says it should try harder to overlook some flaws, realize that he/she’s not perfect either, etc.
Part B is that the person you love (but don’t always like) should take another look at what he/she’s doing/saying, etc. because you’re not just criticizing for the hell of it. And who would know the flaws better than someone close?
It’s more honest than pretending to embrace 100% of the person, IMO.
The reason it is hard is because when you admit to others that you really don’t love the people nearest and dearest to you, you are acknowledging that something has gone very seriously wrong somewhere. We don’t like admitting that we have been abused, or wronged, or that we have abused someone. We don’t want to admit that someone who is biologically programmed to care about us doesn’t…or that we don’t care about them. It’s embarrassing for most of us. To admit we produced a child we just can’t stand? That’s heartbreaking. To tell the world that our own father hates our guts? Not something most people feel giddy about, or even neutral about.
There’s that, and then in my family, it is much more damning to say “I love so-and-so, but I sure don’t like 'em.”
Love has to be actively destroyed before it’s lost, and I’ve found it possible to say “I love so-and-so. I want what’s best for them. I hope they are healthy and happy, but could they please be healthy and happy about 2000 miles away?” because that familial bond of love is there, but I’d so rather not spend time with them. Even then, if they called and asked for help, they’d get it.
I know a lot of people scoff at the idea that blood is thicker than water, and I can understand it when you have a relative who is a complete and utter asshole, but when it’s the people I’m related to and find irritating . . . well, at the very least, they matter because they are important to someone I do love very strongly.
For instance, my Uncle Gil went from being the cool uncle of my childhood to a slightly paranoid, racist conspiracy theorist, and I would rather not spend time with him. However, my mother still loves him dearly as the big brother who looked out for her when she was a kid. Even if I didn’t have enough reason to stir myself on his behalf - which I would - I would do it for my mom.
I love a lot of family members who, to be frank, don’t really deserve my love. I don’t think a single person in today’s society would judge me for walking away from them.
When I say I love them, I really mean it. I don’t feel any obligation. It’s a personal choice. My heart is full of love for them. I’m not going to minimize what happened in the past, but neither am I going to stop loving them. I am a forgiving person and believe that it’s better for me, and all concerned, not to hold a grudge.
I know people who hold onto their bitterness and it never yields anything except more bitterness.
I’d be surprised if you can find a family that doesn’t have some form of dysfunction. Some just hide it well. God knows my family isn’t some Norman Rockwell fantasy either.
I don’t know your dad or you obviously, but I did read your other threads about your situation. Yeah, it sounds like your dad isn’t exactly Father of the Year. But then again, most dads aren’t. If your dad tried to provide for your family, and wasn’t violent, then you had a better dad than a lot of other people out there did. If I were you, maybe I wouldn’t be trying to become best buddies, but I might try to show him some kindness and respect. He probably didn’t know how to be any other way.
Could be. But I think the majority of people do mean it if they say it.
I don’t even pretend to love my extended family that I hardly ever see - I don’t wish them any harm, but they are not in the same league as my immediate family, who I have both loved and hated more than anyone else (sometimes simultaneously).
And I guess we all have our ideas about where to draw the line when it comes to disowning family and such. Personally, I draw the line at things like physical/sexual abuse or severe substance abuse problems, while other people stop talking to family members for years over one argument. If what you’re doing works for you, whatever. Just as long as we all agree that not everyone who does claim to love their family is just saying it to be socially appropriate.
I think it was in his “Bigger and Blacker” (or whatever it’s called) that Chris Rock had a bit about black men bragging about how they supported their kids, and Chris’s rebuttal was along the lines of “You’re supposed to, you dumb shit!” So “not being a deadbeat dad or physical abuser” doesn’t qualify him for much either, IMHO. (And I’ve been pondering whether his behavior toward me growing up could constitute a form of emotional abuse. Not strongly so, if at all, but it sure didn’t do me any favors. Just because other people have had it much, much worse, which I completely acknowledge, doesn’t turn my childhood into a tiptoe through the tulips either.) Mr. S’s dad was an alcoholic asshole and verbally abusive, and yet he is totally behind me in my feelings (or lack thereof) toward my dad. And he says even his dad didn’t cross certain lines that mine has.
I figure that I’m doing him a favor by just staying the hell away from him. My sister enjoys making snide pokes at him, in his presence, some of which he catches and some he doesn’t. I don’t like it when she does that, because it’s just stooping to his level (and setting a bad example for her kids, if they notice).
He has his so-called life and I have mine. Best that they remain as separate as possible. I know I’m much happier that way.
