Dear Miss Dinna —
I am a 35 year old emotionally and mentally stable woman. I have been in and out of countless love relationships. Some long and some as brief as 3 months. I never know how soon I should say the "L word". If I feel a deep connection, would I be scaring off my lover if I said it after 6 weeks of consistent dating? They are very present and my heart says they feel the same way .I just don't know if there is some kind of rule. Please help!
Signed,
Super Lover
Dear Super Lover —
This question has so many various layers to it that, for the sake of staying direct and brief and not going into the impossible realm of your individual psychology, I will take a philosophical approach.
Let's just say, that with out years of pain and baggage and past experiences and life beginning and ending with love and the expression of love and the consequences and rewards of love, we could just feel love organically and say it whenever we pleased .simply for the sake of saying it — simply at the moment we feel it.
Let's take a minute and feel what that might feel like. That, Super Lover, would be a world filled with people spontaneously expressing and saying the "L" word probably countless times over, even sometimes in brief encounters.
Why do we not do that? Why do we not allow ourselves that? Well, mostly because we are either 1)looking for a particular response and therefore it's not an organic expression with no expectations AND/OR 2)(as you stated) afraid we might scare away the other person.
So how do we allow ourselves the freedom to say "I love you" without constantly editing and timing ourselves "appropriately"? We resolve 1 and 2. We take the weight off and let it be as light as LOVE should be or is intended to be. We 1)ask ourselves if we have an expectation of a response and make sure that we do not and 2)we assure the receiver of that fact as well.
Thus, the statement looks something like "I want to tell you that I love you. I want you to know that I love you with no expectations or needs for you to respond in any particular manner.
It is what I feel. You are not responsible for it, it's just simply what I feel. I enjoy feeling it. I embrace it. It makes me feel good, and it makes me feel good to tell you, no matter what your response is, if any.
You could even go as far as saying "I like the way I feel around you and how I see myself in your eyes, and that makes me love you, and in turn love myself even more in my reflection in you" .a sort of twist on Namaste (Translated roughly, it means, "I bow to the God within you", or "The Spirit within me salutes the Spirit in you" - a knowing that we are all made from the same One Divine Consciousness.) .which, I believe, is the true meaning/origin of love and the emotion of loving someone.
Short answer — Go for it! Say it! Scream it from the Rooftops (with a little preempt added in J
LOVE,
Miss Dinna
Ask Miss Dinna a question — any question— regarding relationships, sex and sexuality by emailing her at: dinna1974@gmail.com, Subject: "Ask Miss Dinna." She may answer your question personally or in a future column (your name will be kept anonymous).
