Words to Replace I Love You
From the infamous words of ‘as you wish’ to the various forms we personally create between people as some form of an inside joke; words, phrases and entire paragraphs have often replaced ‘I love you’. And why shouldn’t they? After all, those three simple words have been stuffed with so much power and meaning that they paradoxically have often lost all meaning to the average person.
If there’s any place that takes this to the extreme though it is authors and screenwriters. And it’s entirely possible that the Princess Bride had started it all with those simple words ‘as you wish’. We see it still in John Green’s novel A Fault in Our Stars, in the form of a couple saying ‘always’ to each other repeatedly and eventually ‘okay’. It’s just a common theme because we hear I love you too often these days. You’ve known someone for a week and you are already saying I love you just because one of you said it, rather than because you actually feel it. So in a world where the I love you white noise is so strong of course we turn to the words that can replace it but actually mean something particular to you.
It may not always be romantic love, it could be a phrase you say to your dad or sister that means you love them, but neither of you want to actually say the words I love you because there is just so much social weight in them. And this does work, as a personal phrase to replace I love you. You can use anything as long as it has meaning between the two or more people who are sharing it.
But interestingly, you can’t have a phrase become the new ‘I love you’ world-wide or in your society. As soon as a phrase like ‘As you Wish’ is used, it’s thought of as a joke, or more specifically thought as a cliche that is used by people who aren’t actually feeling an overwhelming emotion of love toward that person. It’s possible this is happening because I love you has become so muddied in our time that it is a cliche itself.
Of course I love you isn’t a cliche for everyone these days, usually only the jaded and cynic people among us, in fact it’s usually thought of as a requirement of being a cynic. For many people still they just see I love you as having too much power. Some people won’t say it because they don’t think they feel it, others won’t say it because they don’t want to admit the emotion behind the phrase, and even more won’t say it because they think it is too cliche or used too often by people who don’t actually feel the emotion of love.
And there are just as many people who don’t say the phrase are there are that say it for the wrong reasons. You see I love yous thrown out as a response to someone else saying I love you, even if you don’t mean it. You see I love yous used as emotional coercion on people to get them to do things you want, most often sex. You even see I love yous said by people who think they are in love when really all they are feeling is enjoyment, which is not the same thing, though the two should come together.
We can really only blame ourselves for all these problems with I love you. But with so many different interactions around just the phrase I love you, we can also show such a depth or lack of depth to a character based on how they use the phrase, or how they handle love in their life. So take advantage of that. Everyone expresses love differently, and everyone does experience love, but differently, so even with your villains, how do they express love, and what can you learn from that?
