Thinking about love
Dec. 10th, 2024 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dismallyorientedThis might be a bit of a strange one. So earlier today a post crossed my tumblr dashboard, one with a load of excerpts from the NYTimes piece "100 Small Acts of Love". I may or may not read the full piece sometime later today. It is more or less exactly what the title says - a list of things that various couples do for each other as expressions of love. Leaving daily medications out, learning how to cook a beloved food and making it together, singing loudly to mask a sound the other cannot stand (the wife in question had actually gotten over that particular bit of misophonia, but didn't tell her husband because she loved his off-tune singing).
It's that kind of stuff, right? The small everyday things. Even the little excerpt of 20 or so examples had me tearing up at work. They're all so human and mundane.
I'm not a person who is particularly good at saying "I love you." In the grand tradition of a lot of Chinese immigrant families, mine was not in the habit of saying it out loud, and I had to deliberately pick up the habit after moving out for college. I think the distance started prompting my mom to say it too, but also I was spending a lot of time in white queer fandom spaces. People were loose with saying "I love you" to friends, and it became easier for me to say it to friends. I've lost the habit somewhat, these days.
This isn't to say the love wasn't there. You will hear a lot of comments about love expressed through action - unsolicited offers of freshly-cut fruit, prompt answers to requests for help (including procrastinated public school assignments), saving you, the kid, the best pieces of whatever dish had been cooked for dinner. There's a charming anecdote from either a blog or a Chinese school textbook of mine - a fictional story about a boy who grew up noticing that whenever his mom made fish for dinner, she'd have the head and give the rest of the meat to him. The punchline being that when he's all grown and hosts dinner with his mom, he still gives her just the fish heads, thinking it's due to a personal preference of hers. Completely failing to recognize it as a deliberate sacrifice to give him the best part of the meal. There are ways in which parents can take out their frustration and make their kids feel like a burden for costing them money and being a small growing person who needed care. That is a parental fuckup par excellence. But there is something to be said for recognizing personal sacrifices made for love, the work that is done for you out of care, and the eventual reciprocity of that work when you are able.
I have continued to be kind of bad at saying "I love you". I say it freely around my wife and her system, and on occasion with my sister and parents. But the extremely delimited circumstances in which I use the damn words means it sometimes feels. Fake? When I use it for anything less than that level of familiarity and closeness. On Esther Day, a community holiday from Nerdfighteria about non-romantic love, I will say it to people and communities which I hold really dear to me. But like. I still have to be prompted to tell my boyfriend that I love him, and that feels bad. I care about this motherfucker and his system to the point of planning to move in with him someday, and yet because I don't know him as well as the system I've dated for 8 Fucking Years I can't squeak out a direct verbal acknowledgement. This feels particularly inadequate when we are long-distance across a national border and I can't do the daily things anymore. The main thing we have left are words and I am artificially delimited.
It came out with my roommate too, recently. Their parents are in town to visit, and needless to say they moved out cross-country because they hated living with them so badly. Their parents are not good to them. My wife and I have been trying our best to support them, to let them vent and encourage them to keep boundaries and reassure them after the Ordeal that is extended time with people who see you as lesser and tear you down. Like. It's a pretty direct and substantial act of love and care to offer your home to someone who needs a place to stay, and also a deep act to stand between someone and their family when they need it. It's Work to make distracting small talk and pushback to a mean and unpleasant mother, or be witness to people passively & actively tormenting a loved one, or to spend time with a couple that actively disrespects each other. But like. I don't feel close enough to them as individuals or as a collective to say that I love them. It feels like a silly semantic distinction to say that I care about them and will put in the work to help keep them safe and provide a space in which they can regain their autonomy and learn how to live as adults, but do not love them. But that is what feels accurate to me. And hell, I think I'm doing a better job at actually caring for them than their mother, who throws the words around like candy. They at least know how seriously I take my commitment to caring for them - I could spit out that much, at least.
I know there are ways to change these situations. I have plans with my boyfriend to try and cultivate our individual relationship (rip to our snail mail aspirations, I hope Canada Post gets their demands met). I had to learn to be freer with vocal affection toward my wife, after she expressed a need for it. I had to learn to let go of the idea that making "I love you" a common phrase cheapened the impact of it. I have easily hit 10,000s of "I love you"s with my wife, and I still have found ways to break my own heart saying it, and probably will until I die. It's just something I've been thinking about recently.
It's that kind of stuff, right? The small everyday things. Even the little excerpt of 20 or so examples had me tearing up at work. They're all so human and mundane.
I'm not a person who is particularly good at saying "I love you." In the grand tradition of a lot of Chinese immigrant families, mine was not in the habit of saying it out loud, and I had to deliberately pick up the habit after moving out for college. I think the distance started prompting my mom to say it too, but also I was spending a lot of time in white queer fandom spaces. People were loose with saying "I love you" to friends, and it became easier for me to say it to friends. I've lost the habit somewhat, these days.
This isn't to say the love wasn't there. You will hear a lot of comments about love expressed through action - unsolicited offers of freshly-cut fruit, prompt answers to requests for help (including procrastinated public school assignments), saving you, the kid, the best pieces of whatever dish had been cooked for dinner. There's a charming anecdote from either a blog or a Chinese school textbook of mine - a fictional story about a boy who grew up noticing that whenever his mom made fish for dinner, she'd have the head and give the rest of the meat to him. The punchline being that when he's all grown and hosts dinner with his mom, he still gives her just the fish heads, thinking it's due to a personal preference of hers. Completely failing to recognize it as a deliberate sacrifice to give him the best part of the meal. There are ways in which parents can take out their frustration and make their kids feel like a burden for costing them money and being a small growing person who needed care. That is a parental fuckup par excellence. But there is something to be said for recognizing personal sacrifices made for love, the work that is done for you out of care, and the eventual reciprocity of that work when you are able.
I have continued to be kind of bad at saying "I love you". I say it freely around my wife and her system, and on occasion with my sister and parents. But the extremely delimited circumstances in which I use the damn words means it sometimes feels. Fake? When I use it for anything less than that level of familiarity and closeness. On Esther Day, a community holiday from Nerdfighteria about non-romantic love, I will say it to people and communities which I hold really dear to me. But like. I still have to be prompted to tell my boyfriend that I love him, and that feels bad. I care about this motherfucker and his system to the point of planning to move in with him someday, and yet because I don't know him as well as the system I've dated for 8 Fucking Years I can't squeak out a direct verbal acknowledgement. This feels particularly inadequate when we are long-distance across a national border and I can't do the daily things anymore. The main thing we have left are words and I am artificially delimited.
It came out with my roommate too, recently. Their parents are in town to visit, and needless to say they moved out cross-country because they hated living with them so badly. Their parents are not good to them. My wife and I have been trying our best to support them, to let them vent and encourage them to keep boundaries and reassure them after the Ordeal that is extended time with people who see you as lesser and tear you down. Like. It's a pretty direct and substantial act of love and care to offer your home to someone who needs a place to stay, and also a deep act to stand between someone and their family when they need it. It's Work to make distracting small talk and pushback to a mean and unpleasant mother, or be witness to people passively & actively tormenting a loved one, or to spend time with a couple that actively disrespects each other. But like. I don't feel close enough to them as individuals or as a collective to say that I love them. It feels like a silly semantic distinction to say that I care about them and will put in the work to help keep them safe and provide a space in which they can regain their autonomy and learn how to live as adults, but do not love them. But that is what feels accurate to me. And hell, I think I'm doing a better job at actually caring for them than their mother, who throws the words around like candy. They at least know how seriously I take my commitment to caring for them - I could spit out that much, at least.
I know there are ways to change these situations. I have plans with my boyfriend to try and cultivate our individual relationship (rip to our snail mail aspirations, I hope Canada Post gets their demands met). I had to learn to be freer with vocal affection toward my wife, after she expressed a need for it. I had to learn to let go of the idea that making "I love you" a common phrase cheapened the impact of it. I have easily hit 10,000s of "I love you"s with my wife, and I still have found ways to break my own heart saying it, and probably will until I die. It's just something I've been thinking about recently.
