“I love you” is lazy communication.

Love is weird. There are so many things about a relationship that make at least a little bit of sense, that are explainable, that you can qualify or quantify. But love? It’s harder.

Love is the secret ingredient in a romantic relationship.

I regularly say that there are 3 “L”s in a romantic relationship.

• Like
• Lust
• Love

Like and lust are easier to explain. When you like someone you think they are just super really cool. They are fun to be around. You enjoy the jokes they make, you respect the direction they are going in their life. Lust is distracting attraction and desire to do terrible nameless things to this burning hot person. But love is hard to talk about, it’s mysterious. We say “I love you” to try to convey this mysterious feeling”

But when we say I LOVE YOU we aren’t always talking exactly about the secret ingredient.

I noticed this when I was relaxing with my current partner, talking about this and that, and I was saying I love you like every minute. I realized that each time I said it, I meant something kinda different.

• I love you — The face you just made at me brings me joy
• I love you — I want to take all your pain away
• I love you — even though we disagree, It hasn’t changed how I feel about you
• I love you — I appreciate that you made me food
• I love you — I really enjoy talking to you

If you look at this list, you can see that “I love you”s are full of information that me and my partner could BOTH use if only I notice what I really mean by the words.

If you say “I love you” and nothing else you aren’t communicating things that could be vital to the relationship.

“I love you” is important, just hearing those words can send you to the moon, but sometimes it’s less important to say “I love you” than “that argument we just had was awful but I appreciate you, cherish you, and want to work through this with you”. They can mean the same thing, but it’s hard to know what exactly each “I love you” means unless you say it.

So try it: next time you want to say “I love you” what do you really mean? What made you want to say I love you?

It takes a lot more work, but it can make your relationship stronger.