The moment is perfect; you are embracing each other closely. You feel the warmth of each other’s bodies, intertwined beating of hearts and the faint perception of the rhythmic pulses touching your skin as it seems every inch of your bodies are touching. The rise and fall of breath throughout your body is the only disturbance of the sweet silence until so sweetly and passionate the words slip from their mouth. All of the peace is lost, an uncomfortable fear begins rise as a comprehension of the moment begins.

“What was that?”, you say pretending ignorance of the impending weight upon the upcoming moment.

“I love you….”

There are no more piercing words than those. The weight of that moment is more intense than most marriage proposals. So much is defined in that moment for those in witness of that statement.

It is an interesting situation that evokes pure unbridled emotion, whether it is the fear of what that means, what they want, or how I feel in response.

I remember the moment, the first time it was said to me, and when I said it for the first time only a moment later. It was a profound connection with this cute hippie girl that I started falling for the moment we met. Lying in bed together only a week after I met her she says those words, “I love you”.

I sat pondering it for a while in silence, affectionately holding her closer in reassurance that what she said was not being ignored. Passing through my consciousness like movie begins memories of my histories of loves, infatuations, crushes, lusts, and passing fancies. I begin to think about my abandoned Mormon upbringing, the morals of no sex before marriage and how sacred love was. I also remember my own choices of wanting to wait until I found someone I truly loved. The weight of this moment became intense beyond measure.

Then piercing through the gravity of the situation a discrete realization occurred to me. I had felt a thousand different feelings in which one could label “love”. With each woman who had invoked feelings within me, it was never the same emotion I felt. To this day, that remains true. It was the realization in that moment that set me free. “Love”, as defined by me in my head, did not exist. It was a fluid dynamic feeling that defied a pre-calculated definition with prior qualifications. There was only that moment, and in that moment I dropped my fears, expectations, and worries. All that existed was how I felt about her.

“I love you too…”

There is so much confusion and competition of other feelings for that coveted place to be love. It is hard to understand exactly what love is or when you are “in” love. We have been hurt, humiliated, falsely desired, smothered, and sometimes even utterly decimated by what we or others call love.

To add to the confusion of our own feelings on the subject, what in the world does that other person who is looking deep into my soul through my petrified eyes feel? What do they want? What does this all mean? No wonder that one little statement evokes panic in people’s hearts.

The moment of existence that this little statement of “I love you” creates is complete vulnerability and openness. It is unfortunate that we do not see or hear that. What we hear is “I now declare you a prisoner of my expectations!”

What if we could put aside the apprehension of the unspoken expectations and hear the statement like this: “I at this moment, have to express my feelings for you as love, with no expectation of further commitments. I say it wholly unencumbered by how you will respond, or act in the presence of this expression of my love.”

How would that change that statement, and free it from the response of utter terror? 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.

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