A Brief Note: What Do We Mean When We Say "I Love You"?

"There are things we knowingly or unknowingly sign on for when we tell someone 'I love you and want to make a life with you.' They entail implicit commitments of a kind that that twenty-eight-year-old journalist found onerous, or so I surmised. They include:

"If we are in a serious relationship and I say I love you, you have a right to expect that I will be interested in your thoughts and feelings and that when you speak I will give you a respectful and attentive hearing.

"If I say I love you, you have a right to interpret this to mean that I will treat you kindly and benevolently.

"If say I love you, you have a right to anticipate that I will be an emotional support system for you in times of stress and distress.

"If I say I love you, I am not promising never to be angry at you or disapproving of some aspect of your behavior, but I am promising to be on your side, to give you empathy and compassion.

"If say I love you, I am certainly declaring that your feelings and needs are important to me.

"If I say I love you, you will be entitled to assume that my intention will be to be fully present to you in our encounters.

"What does it mean — to be fully present?

"It means if you are telling me something that is important to you, I will give you my nonjudgmental, undivided attention; I will not argue with you, inside my own mind, while pretending to be listening. (I will often give you my undivided attention even when you are not saying anything. That will be one of the pleasures of my love for you.)

"If you are talking to me — sharing an idea, describing a problem, conveying a grievance, or reporting an exciting episode at work — being present means being fully in the reality of the moment. It means not attempting to trump your subject with a 'more important' subject of my own.

"It means not rushing to interrupt with a lecture on what you have failed to grasp.

"It means not responding to a grievance with a counterattack.

"It means placing my desire to understand you ahead of my desire to be understood by you.

"Being present entails two aspects: awareness and acceptance.

"A person who does not understand what it means to be present to another human being does not yet understand what it means to be in love."