Dealbreaker: The “I Love You” Guy
Posted by: Arianna Georgi
Filed in:
relationships
11:00AM, Monday February 16th 2009
When it comes to boyfriends, I have never gone for the sentimental type. Maybe it’s because my dad is the sort of guy who likes to sit in the backyard and throw knives at trees. Maybe it’s because I’m not so great at talking about feelings myself. Whatever the reason is, I’ve always had boyfriends that appreciated my ability to chug beer and refer to my breasts as “fun bags.” I prided myself on being above all of that romantic mush, but it turned out, I wasn’t. Because when a guy did show up and started telling me about his feelings right away, I was charmed. What I should have been was suspicious.
At first glance, he seemed to fit right in with the sort of guys I normally like. During our first outing he grabbed my leg under the table with one hand and devoured a giant burrito with the other. He wore massive amounts of Axe body spray. He played in a band, and complimented my ass. So I was taken by surprise when, a few dates in, he took my hand over Indian food and said, “I think I’m in love. How long do you think we have to date before I can marry you?”
He had actually done it. He said “I love you” right away. I was surprised, and then delighted. From there we quickly, (within a week), started sending sappy text messages, and writing adoring notes. “He’s so romantic,” I gushed to my friends, “He’s already given me a nickname!” Who cared that the nickname didn’t really have much to do with me. He told me how much he adored me. He wanted to meet my parents. I found myself swept along, never once questioning it, him, or how I could have found a soul mate in a week and a half.
But almost as quickly as we were professing our undying love, we were fighting. Mostly he seemed to have a problem with what I considered to be my most basic personality traits. “Why are you so competitive?” he complained one day after I screamed curse words at my baseball team from his couch. Then, another time, “you’re always trying to be funny.” For someone so into me, this guy seemed to lack a pretty basic knowledge of, well, me. How could someone so crazy about me a few months ago find my preference for rap music so crazy now?
It turns out I had been too busy writing love sonnets to notice what my friends later informed me was a giant red flag. Across the board, it was the same story. Any guy who declares his love for you right away was one to watch out for. They turn out to be flakes, or cheaters, or just plain nuts. What my friends knew, and I learned, was that someone that can fall in love that quickly is just as quick to fall out, or fall in love with someone else. They are most likely falling in love with love, not you.
Now when I first start dating a guy, I keep an ever vigilant ear out for those three little words. At their most harmless, they are just the result of over-enthusiasm, but they’re still a dealbreaker. Two dates in, if any guy starts talking about what our children will look like, I cut him off and ask for the check. And if I really like him, and he stares into my eyes and starts out, “maybe it’s too soon to say this, but…” I’m not afraid to put a finger to his lips and tell him to shut up.
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Angieliz
wrote on February 16 2009 @ 11:21 am: [report]
By the time you swear you’re his, shivering and sighing. And he swears his love for you is infinite and undying, Lady make a note of this: One of you is lying.
Dorothy Parker
vanya
wrote on February 16 2009 @ 11:27 am: [report]
And sometimes they just want to get married and don’t much care to whom. I dated a guy like this for a few months, and when I got cold feet at his rush job, we broke up. He was engaged to a different woman within 3 months. They broke up when planning their wedding, and he married a different woman on “their” wedding day, at the same location and with the same ring 6 months later. Don’t know if those 2 are still together.
It’s a bit ironic then that I married my husband a few months after meeting him, but we both knew it was the real deal. Almost 10 years later, neither one of us would change a thing.
CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on February 16 2009 @ 11:54 am: [report]
You want us to say it, you don’t want us to say it….make up your mind.
Ultraviolet
wrote on February 16 2009 @ 12:28 pm: [report]
I went on a first meet for coffee and the guy pretty much had a time line for the relationship and we should be serious at this point and living together at this point. Sounds creepier than it was and I wimped out and agreed to a second date. I “broke up” with him on the second date(is that the proper term after one date?) and he almost started crying. Guaranteed, I would have had an “I love you” by the 3rd date. He just wanted to get serious and get married and knowing that he didn’t care to who was just sad.
lalaland
wrote on February 16 2009 @ 12:30 pm: [report]
We want you to say, but not until it’s true…
vanya
wrote on February 16 2009 @ 12:34 pm: [report]
We want you to say it when it’s genuine, and we don’t want you to say it when it’s not. See my example above, if the guy I was dating then had been genuinely in love with me, waiting two whole months for me to finish graduate school before eloping should not have been a dealbreaker.
Lynn
wrote on February 16 2009 @ 02:18 pm: [report]
I could see someone getting swept away in that. But these days, I take things S-L-O-W. If someone told me he loved me after even a couple months, I’d high-tail it out of there. I’ve been with too many guys who tried to rush things, or who I suspect were more interested in being in love than actually being in love with me, so I’m very skittish and suspicious now.
SummerLane
wrote on February 16 2009 @ 02:42 pm: [report]
I had a guy ask me what my favorite stone was, 2 weeks into it. The same guy pretty much told me he loved me and said he would be proposing next Christmas a week later. He was “heart broken” when I broke up with him two days after that, but within hours had posted a new personal ad online. He then continued to stalk me by having a female friend of his start talking to my ex husband on myspace. CRAZY! To hell with a bullet, I feel like I dodged an atomic bomb!
EarthGoddess
wrote on February 16 2009 @ 09:54 pm: [report]
My husband and I met online. We chatted for only a week and then met for lunch. My the end of the hour we spent together the very first time I met him in person, I was his. It was something I felt in the depths of my soul, and I have been addicted to him ever since. I didn’t tell him “I love you” that first day, but I could have. It was obvious. He ended up saying it first, on our fourth date, and now we’re happily married and are more in love than ever. So, if you feel it, say it. It’s never too early if it’s real.
Trishkabob
wrote on February 16 2009 @ 10:31 pm: [report]
Personally, I have trust issues, due to the past..so when a guy tells me he loves me, I tend to not believe it. Actions speak louder than words so if his actions match the “I love you’s” then awesome.
crazyincarolina
wrote on February 17 2009 @ 09:07 am: [report]
I love that right next to this article is an ad:
“Make a man fall in love? Learn what men really want…”
Humble Bee
wrote on February 17 2009 @ 01:56 pm: [report]
MY bf has a tendency to say it every half hour. When he feels that i’m ignoring him, he always ends our conversations with “i love you”, Its so damn annoying, its like if saying it, is some type of assurance that you won’t leave him. He’s probably thinking, “ahh sigh. She still loves me” how stupid, I agree with Trishkabob, actions speak louder than words, I love you doesn’t mean #&@$% to me.
EastCoastMale
wrote on February 17 2009 @ 03:05 pm: [report]
I dont know that there is any ONE blanket answer to this problem. Yes some who say I love you, both men and women, too quickly may be just searching for affection to be found with anyone who accepts them into their life but none of us can say with absolute certainty that is always the case. “We want you to say it when it’s genuine and we don’t want you to say it when it’s not”, this to me is more confusing than anything because what if the person saying it really means it after a month or so….how do you prove that its genuine?. Is it only when the person being adored feels their standards and preconditions are met, they feel it back or they arent suspicious anymore. Love can happen in an instant in my opinion, sometimes professed too quickly ..
writergirl
wrote on February 17 2009 @ 04:20 pm: [report]
The first guy who told me “I love you” turned out to be using me to fill in for the person he *really* loved—my best friend at the time. They are married now and exceedingly happy. She and I still do have a friendship.
The second guy who said it was a verbal abuser….
They both told me they loved me within three weeks of having started dated? Maybe sooner.
So I would say, yeah, definately, the article has a significant amount of credibility.
vanya
wrote on February 17 2009 @ 06:12 pm: [report]
@ECM - I don’t think it has to be proven. I think that a person’s actions will naturally show whether it’s genuine or not, male or female, no effort required for proof. As I mentioned above, if the guy I was dating then had been genuinely in love with me, waiting two whole months for me to finish graduate school before eloping should not have been a dealbreaker. Why would you NOT want your spouse to accomplish a goal they’d been diligently working towards for years, a goal that they were just a few weeks away from finishing?
In the grand scheme of one’s life, is knowing someone for 10 weeks (incl. the 8 weeks left of grad school) before marrying them really such an unbearably long time for a courtship that one cannot agree to it? Why such a rush?
Likewise, the action of finding a new bride within a matter of weeks, and then replacing that bride with yet another bride, again in short order, was an indication that his feelings for me/us weren’t really genuine.
I do believe that love can come about quickly, as my own experience meeting & marrying my husband taught me. Yet, to use an example borrowed from my sister-in-law, if I were still single, I’d still be wary of any guy who professes his love within hours of meeting me, but doesn’t know how to pronounce my name.
vanya
wrote on February 17 2009 @ 06:13 pm: [report]
PS - it’s good to “see” you around again, ECM. =)
Chelle
wrote on February 17 2009 @ 07:42 pm: [report]
I had one guy say it within 3 weeks of dating me. He was NUTS. I’m actually pretty sure he’s a borderline schizophrenic. To make a long story short he ended up changing his mind within a month of telling me that. He said he didn’t know why he told me that. Then a month after that, he broke up with me saying he felt like he was dating his sister. This guy had issues!
EastCoastMale
wrote on February 18 2009 @ 10:54 am: [report]
I agree that there is a definite strong possibility that members of either sex saying they love someone within a week may be an indicator of other issues or trying to skip past a basic incompatibility. However, one of the things I was trying to express that is if you are viewing it from the point of view of one half of a relationship, the guy moves on and gets a “replacement” partner or whatever you want to call it, of course that person is going to chalk it up to them not being genuine with anyone because they feel hurt on some degree, however small. Its not being expressed from an unbias third party is my point, a man could say I love you to soon to one woman, they break up 3 weeks later and then he actually DOES meet someone he feels this way truely about very soon after and they go on to flourish. The first woman most likely wont see it as genuine even if it is because it is justifying her reason. Not saying this is always the case and there are both crazy women AND men out there, not just jerk guys, just stating the possibilities. =)
eatmybook
wrote on June 8 2009 @ 12:24 pm: [report]
Ugh. I just realized that I’m the one who wants to get serious and get married. I’m not sure how much I care about who to ... I just want it over with.
No Bozos
wrote on July 14 2009 @ 10:47 am: [report]
If we’d only invest ourselves for a lifetime.
Lust and physical attraction may make for great sex, but “love” has been merchandised to us by the media. Relationships and principles have been set to the side.
My first relationship was love at first sight. But did I say it right off the bat, NO.
A principle of always striving to be a friend was my guide. (note: striving doesn’t always mean you are, human factor) We shared life’s path but seven years later our paths, though close, weren’t going to the same place.
Took me a decade to get over that. Our son came and lived with me for his high school years. She’s still a dear friend.
I wasn’t looking for it, then BAM, it happened again.
Again, I didn’t say it right of the bat, took five months until I felt the relationship was secure enough. We’ve been married twenty plus years. (Felt a little weird when the aunts and nieces played in the park) My son confided in me that he didn’t see this coming.
Beware of “I love you” right from the get go.
Know any unhappy friends going through the motions?
Take a good look!
Don’t be in a hurry. Enjoy life’s journey with those who share your path in life. Our society has changed to instant gratification instead of investment in a full fulfilling life.
If you find someone to share your love, great! Look at their actions before the words.