“I Love You … ”

I truly wish each time I said it for the first time they could hear it as such. Unfortunately or fortunately, I can only change my response to it, as well as learn to be clearer in what I mean when I say it. This is the only key to the binding shackles associated with hearing or saying these words for the first time.

This can be expanded to any expression of interest or love. If it is not done in the most delicate and appropriate of manners it always evokes fear. That fear is never about the fact that another person feels this way about us. Being loved is welcomed and needed; it is food for our starving soul reaching out for connection with people. It is the fear of expectations that drives us to fortify ourselves in epic proportions with walls and barriers around our return of those emotions. Conversely, expressing our love with expectations, hope of commitment, or even needing it to be reciprocal is also our undoing.

My challenge for myself as I walk this path of finding companionship, sex, intimacy, friendship, and human connection in this life, is to love and express my love without declaring others prisoners of my expectations. I choose to say those words when I can say them without needing any particular response or reaction, commitment or expectation. When I hear those words, I need to stop the escalating feeling of fear and remind myself that being loved is the most amazing feeling on earth, and until expectations or commitments are voiced I shall assume there are none. There is only my feelings and how I choose to express them at that moment unbridled by fear.