I need to know when it's okay to tell your partner you love them

[andrewducker]

Poll #34358

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 10

View Respondents

What's the soonest you can tell a new partner you love them?

View Answers

First date
0 (0.0%)

First few days
1 (11.1%)

First week
1 (11.1%)

First two weeks
1 (11.1%)

First month
1 (11.1%)

First two months
0 (0.0%)

First six months
1 (11.1%)

First year
1 (11.1%)

Longer than a year
0 (0.0%)

THEY MUST NEVER KNOW
0 (0.0%)

I don't do "Love"
0 (0.0%)

SEWIWEIC
3 (33.3%)

What's the longest you'd wait for a partner to declare love before giving up on them?

View Answers

First date
0 (0.0%)

First few days
0 (0.0%)

First week
0 (0.0%)

First two weeks
0 (0.0%)

First month
0 (0.0%)

First two months
3 (30.0%)

First six months
1 (10.0%)

First year
1 (10.0%)

Longer than a year
1 (10.0%)

I WILL WAIT FOREVER
1 (10.0%)

I don't do "Love"
0 (0.0%)

SEWIWEIC
3 (30.0%)

Triggered by a couple of things recently where people were shocked that people would tell them that they were in love within the first few months.

And my general view is that if you aren't incredibly excited to spend loads of time with me and wander around holding hands while grinning a lot within the first few weeks of dating then we are probably not compatible.

Comments

[mountainkiss]

I don’t think I subscribe to the premise. Individual circumstances are too different. For example, two people who’ve known each other years might do it on the first date without scaring the other off / believing infatuation too quickly / seeking to gaslight / all the other failure modes. But at the other end of the spectrum, two people who live in different locations might want to be very sure indeed before making such disclosure, and it seems a shame for an arbitrary deadline to have a negative impact on the relationship.

[rhythmaning]

I was going to say something like this, but unsurprisingly you have expressed it much more cogently than I could!

[mountainkiss]

Guidelines not rules 💛

[andrewducker]

I wouldn't have a hard rule about such things. But if we're not "feeling it" after a couple of months I'd definitely be questioning whether there was likely to be an "it" there in the long term, or if we were just wasting each other's time.

(And that includes long distance. My long-distance relationships have tended to be just as intense, with long conversations into the night, both written and audio.)

[mountainkiss]

I think it’s different for different people. I’m reliably feeling it after two months. That’s no indicator at all of what I’m feeling after two years. So I am not a reliable witness at that point.

[andrewducker]

It would be lovely if feeling it at 2 months was a reliable indicator of feelings after 2 years. But even if it's not that doesn't change whether I feel it at 2 months.

[mountainkiss]

Sorry. I’m not being clear. If I understand this correctly then we are opposites here:

(1) if you don’t feel it at two months then you aren’t going to feel it at two years, so your two-month signal is necessary albeit not sufficient.

(2) I will feel it at two months whether or not there’s any possibility of feeling it at two years, so my two-month signal is nothing more than noise.

Therefore for you to take a reading and potentially have a conversation at two months is useful and sensible. For me to do so is at best random and (more likely) at worst harmful.

There’s a whole bunch of associated stuff around what it actually means to tell someone you love them. Could have very different weighting / implications depending on (1) personality of speaker (2) personality of receiver (3) quality of conversation.

[rmc28]

I don't even remember exactly when I first told fanf I loved him, but we were engaged within 5 months of starting dating so ... earlier than that. Probably not the first couple of weeks.

Also this is romantic love. I tell my hockey teammates I love them all the time.

[wildeabandon]

I think it's complicated because people mean such very different things when saying that they love someone and/or that they're in love with them, and for me at least what I mean has changed over the years.

I've been involved with people who make me grin like a fool at first, with whom it became clear once that wore off that we weren't compatible in the long term, and people where my initial feelings were warm and tender and have grown deeper and more powerful over the years but without ever going through the giddy phase. When I'm in the midst of the grinning like an idiot phase, but also conscious that I don't really know them as well as it feels like I do, I might be inclined to say something like "I could fall in love with you so easily", which I think expresses both the intensity of what I'm feeling, and some sense of awareness that it isn't yet solidly grounded.

Of course it makes a huge difference whether you met and started dating, or started dating a friend. In the case of the latter, then your poll is missing the option "before we started dating."

[andrewducker]

I definitely don't mean the same things now with Jane as I did nine years ago.

But I'd still count both feelings as different flavours of "love".

And yes, I decided not to list "Before we started dating", as over-complicating things, but I have no objection to it!

[rhythmaning]

It entirely depends - on just about everything.

I don't believe there is a hidden timetable to which relationships have to run before switching trains!