Love and its expression

People express their love for others in different ways. Some believe saying “I love you” is good enough to express love while others say sharing everything with a loved one is the best way of expressing love.

Love is usually pure and mildly possessive but involves lots of care too. Infatuation can be detected easily. When a person says he is in love with the persons he says he loves but is unwilling to talk to, make any eye contact with, or unwilling to do anything at all with the persons he says he loves and stays away and remains shy, it’s a definite sign that he is infatuated; he simply cannot find any fault with that person. Lust is also different from love. It is usually expressed through short physical or emotional (most of the time physical) relationships.

Maeregu Tekle, 37, a lawyer by profession, agrees with the distinction between love and lust. He says, “Love is when you love a person wholly with your spirit, heart, mind and body. Lust is when you only love part of him/her, which means that you value only a part of the person and not his/her whole personality.” He says that telling his wife that he loves her every time should not be mandatory as he has dedicated to spend the rest of his life with her. Before they were married he used to tell her every now and then that he was madly in love with her. However, after ten years of marriage, he does not feel comfortable telling her that anymore. “It is not like I don’t love her anymore, but I am over with the excitement and trying to taste every single moment.”

Zebib Abebe, 21, a student in a private college, is currently in her eleventh relationship. The longest relationship that she ever had was for a year and eight months while the shortest was two weeks.

“I tell my boyfriend that I  love him when we hang up the phone or when he does sweet things for me like take me out for dinner or give me gifts,” says Zebib.

Zebib has reservations about telling her boyfriend that she loves him in front of her parents. “I would never say ‘I love you’ to my boyfriend in front of my parents because it’s frowned upon in our culture.”

She says she only tells a person that she is in love with him if she has real feelings for him. “But if I don’t have that feeling and if it is something else, I just don’t express it.”

Some people refrain from telling the persons they love that they are in love with them unless they know first that they love them. However, people like Zebib do express their love when they are pressured. “Eventhough I was not in love with one of my boyfriends, I told him that I loved him when he said he loved me over and over again because I did not want to hurt his feelings.

Zebib believes that by saying ‘I love you’ she can express the love and the respect she has for a guy. And if she is madly in love with a guy, making love would do it too.

There are many girls who think that it is shameful for them to express first love for their boyfriends. Some of them say that no matter how much they are in love with that the person, they would never say ‘I love you’ first unless they are dead sure that person is in love with them too. Zebib agrees with this. “I don’t say I love you first because I have so much pride.” Her pride stems from the fact that her previous relationships did not last long. So she believes that there is no point of  telling a boyfriend that she loves him before he does. But, she still believes that saying ‘I love you’ is the best way to express love.

“What is the point of saying ‘I love you’ when I know it is going to end sometime? So I think it’s better to save it,” says 42-years-old Eleni Tekle, who grew up in the U.S. She started dating from early age and went through three boyfriends in quick succession. “Ever since then, I have this phobia that it is never going to work out with any other guy. I prefer not to use ‘I love you’ for someone who is never going to love me and end up with me.”

People express their love by showing how much they care about their love partners, by writing sweet things to each other, doing something special for each other and the like. “I would prefer expressing my love for a guy, for instance, by getting him something that he wants,” says Eleni.

It is not customary for a woman to ask a man to have a relationship with her. However, for Jerusalem Ambachew, 51, expressing her love helped her land her soul mate. Jerusalem says that she has been open all her life and that her father taught her that if she wants something she has to go and get whatever it is. “I believe that if I want something done I have to do it myself.”

So if she really likes a person, no matter what, she will go straight to and talk to that person.  And if she knows he has something for her then she will ask him to start a relationship.

“If I am in my parents’ house with my husband, I tell him that I love him no matter what. I am not interested in going to receptions which my husband is not invited to,” says Jerusalem.

Leul Abate, 16, has a 15-year-old girlfriend called Naomi Teklay. They both are in grade 10 and it has been three years since they started their relationship. Leul says he doesn’t know the difference between love and infatuation as well as that  between liking and loving. However, he always tells his girlfriend that he loves her. “I know that I would marry this girl for real and it is very comfortable for me to tell her that I love her.” Naomi on her part says it is very hard to tell whether she is going to end up with him or not. “I always tell him that I love him, because it helps me to feel that I am showing my love sufficiently,” says Naomi. Whenever she eats something unique she shares a half portion with Leul. She thinks that sharing food with Leul helps to forge a stronger bond between them.

Berhane Taye, 65, a security guard, says dedicating himself to live to with  his wife, with whom he has lived together for the past 35 years, is the ultimate form of expressing his love. “I don’t say ‘I love you’ to my wife because my presence with her is also a way of showing her my love,” says Berhane.