When we were first married, I told my wife “I love you. If I ever change my mind, I’ll let you know.”
For some reason, that didn’t seem to do the trick.
Regards,
Shodan
I dunno, I like to hear it. Yeah I know my bf loves me but it still makes me feel better to hear it a lot too. Insecurity, maybe. And partially habit. But I do not think it’s a bad habit or us saying it only to each other with that frequency diminishes the meaning though. If we did not mean it we would not say it. We both are the types that waited until we were sure until we said it to each other, and don’t throw the phrase around where it’s not meant.
To how I said earlier that I always say it even when I’m pissed - that means a lot. For other people I would say “fuck it I’m hanging up on you” or whatever but with him, even when he pisses me off I still have feelings of love. Otherwise I wouldn’t deal with it cause the person was not important enough to me.
In my old job I shared a supervisory role with a female co-worker (I’m male) and even though our desks were only ten feet apart, we were on the phone with each other all the time. One time we were having a distracted coversation, both trying do other things while talking, and at the end of the call I said “Okay bye” and she said “Okay, love you, bye.” I was about to burst out laughing when my phone immediately began to ring again; it was her: “Oh my God I DO NOT LOVE YOU!” 
I’ve been with my husband for over a decade: he’s never said he loved me (outside repeating the marriage vows) and I say it every day. We have a solid relationship, and I am as confident in his affections as he is in mine, because we are both getting what we need.
There’s no best way to deal with this sort of thing. It takes communication and understanding and a certain type of open-mindedness.
My wife and I say to each other all the time. Sometimes it’s a fairly casual “love you” that’s more or less the same tone as “have a good day at work”. But, it’s also not uncommon to turn to the other with a look of gratitude and utter a heartfelt, “God, I love you so much” that is a deep, deep expression of my feelings for her.
Doesn’t have to be one or the other.
I can never hear it enough, I never tire of it.
Mig and I say it every day at some point. As long as we mean it, it never becomes meaningless. I always mean it, no matter how angry I am when I say it.
I say it to my oldest every time we talk online, on the phone, or when I drop her off in the morning at work. My little one hears it before she walks down that hall in school every morning.
The last time I saw my mother alive we hugged and told each other we loved each other. That’s a good memory to hold on to. If anything happens to me, I want my loved ones to feel that same comfort.
My husband and I sort of have a “long-distance” marriage in that he works out of town, and is only home for three days, every two weeks (comes home on Friday nights on pay weeks, and heads back out on Monday afternoons). We talk on the phone every day, sometimes several times a day. Sometimes before ending the convo, we’ll say “I love you”, sometimes not.
One time, about 12 years ago, I got really, really sick. My husband was working out of town (yeah, this is an ongoing thing), and I called my best friend to ask her if she could drive me to the hospital after church (this was a Sunday morning, and she’s a hard-core Christian, and I knew church was important to her; but I could not stop vomiting!). She asked if I wanted her to take me to the hospital immediately, and I said that would be good. As I got out of her car, she said “Love ya!” and I thought “Oh my God, she thinks I could die!” We’ve been friends for a long time, and I know she loves me, and I love her. But we never say it.
I have four sisters. I love them all, but am only really close to one of them. We talk on the phone a couple of times a week. Sometimes, after really emotionally-charged conversations, one of us will say something like “You know I love you, right?” and that’s that. The others? Meh. It’s been years since we’ve said it, even though I know it’s there.
I do tell my kids all the time. My two oldest are adults and out on their own, but we never end a phone conversation without saying “I love you” (Or in the case of my 18YO, she’ll say “'Bye; epic lurve”, to which I respond “Epic!”, and it means the same thing). I also tell my 9YO frequently. She tells me a lot that she loves me, and I know it means a lot to her for me to tell her, even though what I really aim for is to show her.
It’s complicated, I guess. . .
Same here. I don’t feel strongly about it, but it bothers me that saying “I love you” pretty much forces the lovee to reply with “and I love you too.” Devalues it somehow.
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We say “I love you” at every possible opportunity. It doesn’t diminish anything for us. We believe that you can’t say it or hear it enough.
The men that I know who don’t say it because it “loses its value” if said too much are the same men that aren’t demonstrative and loving toward their spouse anyway. How’s that for a broad brush.
Not having read the responses, I imagine I’m not the first to say this. I say it when I leave the house, or when we hang up the phone, because if I get hit by a bus, I want her to know that my last words to her were “Love you,” or something of the sort.
Joe
ETA : Only to my wife. I think I’ve said “I love you” to only 2 other people in my life, and no one else in the last 15 years.
What I always found strange is reports from people that their parents rarely if ever told them they loved them. :eek: They usually qualify it by saying that they are sure their parents really did but that is borderline child abuse in my mind and I can’t even imagine it. I have no idea why a parent, usually fathers but sometimes mothers as well, would be so reserved and uptight that they couldn’t express feelings for their own kids in every form possible.
I wouldn’t use the word “terrified,” but yes, I’ve almost said “I love you” to my boss’s boss on the phone…
Joe
My family was never big on the "I love you"s while I was growing up. Not to say we never heard it…in fact, that was the last thing my Mom said to me and my sister every day when we left for school (elementary school, anyway…by the time we hit junior high or so she was back at work and out the door before us most mornings). But that’s the only context I can really think of where it was a regular routine.
Then, a few days before I turned 19, my 15 year-old cousin died of spinal meningitis. It was very quick, and his immediate family never really got a chance to say goodbye to him. (He went to bed one night and they found him in a coma next morning…) Anyway, we never discussed it openly, but ever since then my parents and my sister and I always end conversations with “I love you.” You just never know when a conversation you have is going to be your last one.
Hubby and I say it to each other every day…when he leaves for work, and anytime we talk on the phone. Same principle. I like hearing it…I don’t think it wears in the washing. And we both say it to our daughter about fifty gazillion times a day. We figure we gotta squeeze it in before she starts complaining about how embarrassing it is. 
(She’s two.)
Me too.
My family is very touchy-feely - even between adults, there are lots of random hugs, kisses (pecks on the lips) for hello and goodbye, touching someone’s hand when you’re talking with them, etc. I remember when I was about 12, holding hands with my mom as we walked down the street (and some idiot yelled “DYKES” from a passing car). I hadn’t thought anything of it, until that jerk yelled.
We’re equally verbally affectionate. Lots of “I love you’s”, especially when taking leave of one another, etc.
And Oni no Husband and I are much the same - sometimes he’ll be reading in bed and I’ll be on the computer in the living room, and apropos of nothing one of us will shout “LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!” To which the other will reply something like “Yay! I do love you so!” We also still, after 11 years together and 8 years married, hold hands or walk with our arms around each other.
I’ve been in relationships with guys who weren’t big on saying “I love you”, or who didn’t feel comfortable with any sort of PDA however mild, and I never felt good in them. To me, that’s just something you do if you care about them, you never ever want them to question it and so you reaffirm it as much as possible, in every way you can.
To the people who say “I don’t tell my sweetie I love him/her, I show them instead” - is there any reason why the two should be mutually exclusive?
Nah, not at all. I’ve never heard my father say it. But it was impossible to get any other meaning when he dropped me off for college, half teared up, and tried to shake my hand goodbye. He’s a good-old-boy, raised on a farm, and he can’t show emotion to other men. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel it. I hugged him anyway.
If you know, it may not be important to hear the words.
With my girlfriend, it’s a sometimes thing. Never on the phone if we’re not long distance, sometimes if we are. And rarely or never as a goodbye thing in person, unless we’re going to be physically separated for a while.
Ya know, Shodan, despite our obvious philosophical and political differences, you still amaze me, and make me laugh, with your occasional succinct comments!
Back to the OP…as you will note from my location, I have lived in a lot of places, but it was only here in Las Vegas that I first heard people ending telephone conversations with “I love you.” It struck me as very odd. I really thought it was a Mormon thing (I first worked here at a law firm with lots of Mormons) but later determined it was more widespread. Is this something new?
At any rate, I find it sort of banal. I mean, saying it at home before you sleep, or saying it when you leave the house - OK. But ending every conversation on the phone with “I love you”? Well, that is kind of weird to me. Might as well end every conversation with “Don’t fuck anyone else while I’m away!”
Call me old-fashioned: On the phone, we say, “Bye.”
My mother almost never said “I love you” to us; if I said it to her, she’d respond with “I’m glad” if she was in a good mood, or something really snarky if she was in a bad mood (Me: I love you, Mom. Her: Really? Couldn’t prove it from the amount of help I get out of you!) Nice, huh? The flipside is that she freely expressed what PITA’s she thought we all were, and frequently would say things like “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I should have never had kids to start with!” (Gee, ya think?!?)
Years later, after we were all grown, menopause and money troubles were behind her, and she knew she was dying, she mellowed some. But I’ll tell ya: it was damned hard growing up like that, and I have never said anything to any of my kids that would give them reason to believe I’m anything but delighted that I have them!
My father, OTOH, he didn’t say it much, either, but it was different. Now, if I said to him “I love you, Daddy”, sometimes he’d look a little surprised, but then he’d say something like “Well, I love you too, pal”, in his gruff voice. But he never went down the other road, either, and made any of us feel like burdens. Also, he showed his love. He was a carpenter, and he never complained about me watching him in his workshop, even though I know (from the vantage point of hindsight, of course) that I was frequently in his way. Instead of ever telling me “Scoot, kiddo, you’re gettin’ in the way”, he’d find some way for me to “help” (which I know now is parental shorthand for “making the kid happier, while it makes my job harder”). He was also the person who started my life-long love affair with reading. Anyone who teaches you to love reading can’t be all bad!
Actually, that is how we end emails these days! Duh.
Guess you didn’t get the memo. 
It’s a generic closer. Blech.
Growing up, my family rarely, if ever, said it. When I starting living around the world, I started telling them at the end of phone conversations. Now I always do. My mom just died unexpectedly and I’m glad the last thing I said to her was “I love you” when we ended our last phone conversation.