The I-Love-You Conundrum



I LOVE YOU! Often considered to be the three most beautiful words to be ever heard, they are actually misunderstood.
Simply putting it, loving someone doesnt mean that you get married to the person, have kids and spend rest of your life with them. I love chocolates but all the fore said things are not possible with chocolates. Now, you would argue that a chocolate is not a living entity. So, I love dogs, especially puppies. Who can not love those tiny bundles of soft fur, button eyes gleaming with innocence and cute faces. Again, you can argue that I am a human. So, let us get more specific. I love my mother, my father, my siblings, my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncles, my aunts, my friends and the list goes on. I love them and I want them (or specific ones whom I can tolerate) to be around me all the time. I want them to be a part of my laughs and share my sorrows. I want them to see my grow old and stupid and still love me back.

You see, love IS NOT just being around a person all the time. That's almost a punishment, like being in bars all the time (JAIL). Love IS to willingly spend time with someone you can be yourself with and enjoy every moment, be it joy or sorrow. Love is to accept a person as they are. Love is to be yourself and let them be themselves.
Recently, this term has been distorted and modified. It is now almost a synonym to infatuation, affection, obsession or even lust. Consider this, the English are good learned people. I am sure that they didnt create these multiple words just to make their dictionaries thicker or to write the thesaurus or just to mock others. Yes, there are words with very slight difference but the difference is significant enough to distinguish them into two different words.

Now, having said all the above, I am no expert in this subject. Everything I write is what I believe and none of you are obligated to follow this. I just want to say that being a girl, I can fall in love with a guy. I can adore him for the person he is. I can enjoy his talks that the others dont understand. I can care for him like family. I can fight with all the rights over his life. I can want to spend the rest of my life knowing him. I can plan of activities for the two of us for like forty years from today. And yet, this person need not be a lover or a husband. He is can be my father, brother, friend or best friend - depending on how much they are comfortable to share back. If you dont agree, read the above lines again with a different perspective. Since I started with 'I can fall in love with a guy', automatically, the brain gets triggered to picture a couple.

Coming to the title - firstly it is inspired by The Big Bang Theory episode titles. Secondly, you might wonder that the conundrum here is that if I say 'I Love You', which sort of 'I Love You' it is. Do I love him like a brother, a father, a friend or a lover? Actually, wrong! This is very simple. Love is a feeling and if I say 'I Love You', it doesnt make any difference unless it is reciprocated. If I say I-Love-You to my dad and he replies back to his daughter, I love him like a dad. This concept is just like bro-zoned. Let a girl call you a brother but unless you too want to consider her your sister, doesnt really end your chances of hitting on her.
The Conundrum I speak of is the confusion we have with our feelings. Its a simple word and let us stop confusing it with the other ones.
Well, maybe the feeling I spoke of, has a different name altogether and I am the one unenlightened. Well, if you know, do share.