Lovefaking

Around this time five years ago I was breaking up with someone. It was messy, and regrettably mean - on both sides. Somewhere along the way we'd stopped loving each other for reasons that aren't worth listing anymore. I still don't know which one of us fell out of love first, but I do know that we continued to exchange, "I love you," long past the point where either of us meant it. At the end of our phone conversations and emails, it had become a handy euphemism for the one word we should have said years before we actually did, "Goodbye."

The first empty, "I love you," of my life was so poorly camouflaged it was laughable. I was a teenager, and the guy just said it hoping I'd reciprocate with my virginity. When I didn't, he promptly broke up with me. So much for love, eh? By the time my ex and I were faking love a decade later, I was an old pro.

For me the false I love you's always happen during the hardest part of the relationship: the end. Of course it's not always apparent that the end is The End until it's really all said and done. And since I'm stubborn, it's hard for me to quit a person once we've shared something meaningful, and it takes a tortuously long time to say and do it all. When you're desperately mad at someone that you once loved dearly, and they say, "I love you," it may be hard to say it in return, but it is often harder to remain silent. Saying nothing is an acknowledgment of the end, a surrender of the last remaining hope that things will work out. Silence in the face of love is the final giving up.

If I choose to be kind and give myself the benefit of the doubt, I'll cut myself some slack for the half-true I love you's that were spoken in the downward spirals of relationships past. Sometimes the fight is not over until the fight is over, you know? But if I choose to be honest, I have to wonder if the end of love makes a liar out of me. I have never recovered from faking love. In every past relationship I can remember a time near the end when I knew I didn't mean it when I said, "I love you," and yet, without exception, I continued to verbally offer the sentiment and return it in kind. If I had been honest, if I had been braver, I would have stopped saying it when the emotion behind it evaporated.

In early December I will quietly celebrate the third year of sharing my life with a man I love as much as I always hoped I would love someone, and he loves me the same way in return. I believe that we are each assured of the other's love, trust, and respect because of our actions, rather than our words. Oh, we share I love you's, of course - but they are more rare. Somehow it helps to keep them meaningful and tender, never rote or automatic. The strength of his love helps me to be brave. It keeps me honest.

I hope that he and I can continue to courageously share true love for the rest of our lives - verbally, and otherwise.