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Last time I said "I love you" to someone (in a legit way), she told me "You're confused"
Broke me in thousands of pieces, hurts like hell man...
Generational Psych Hot Take: It's just weird Gen X neurosis, they were living through the End of History (tm) in the 90s and very early 00s so they didn't have anything better to worry about, lol. What movies or tv shows is it big in? American Pie I think, 70s show for sure, Friends, Buffy. The thing where you aren't supposed to say I love you is SUPER anglo.
Nah, it's def a common trope. I'm pretty sure that I've seen it in Friends and Seinfeld. Sorry, I stopped watching TV a long time ago.
Scrubs had an episode where Elliott’s boyfriend was in the other room and she was looking at cassette tapes and said “I love U2”, but her BF thought she said “I love you too” so he said it back. So she does the sitcom thing of trying to play along with it before breaking things off at the end of the episode.
My wife (when we were dating in high school) said it 2-3 weeks in. I panicked super hard. Like it's a lot of commitment. We obviously stayed together, but retrospectively it was a bit intense for that point in our relationship. So it's more of a timing thing than anything, and someone's will probably commit early compared to the other and that's okay. It's a matter of being reasonable about expectations even with a "love you" on the field.
I think the West has a very neurotic, protestant relationship with love. If you visit, say, South America, people are so much more chill and open about it.
I'd guess that keeping people from free happiness is a good way to get them stuck in hamster wheel of capitalism.
I've dated white people and they definitely say "I love you"
You're certainly right. But I think the frequency is less compared to other cultures. Dunno, I haven't read any research on this.
My husband and I say I love you but my family pretty much never says to each other. My husband who’s not white says it every time when hanging up the phone with his family and they’ll even say it to me which feels weird.
The west is just hell and guaranteed neuroses for everyone who lives in that shitty culture
I think it's just a representation of the normal anxiety that everyone feels in a serious relationship, but blown up for TV. It's hard to pull drama from a nuanced inner monologue a character is having about their feelings, but if you make them freak out you can do a 22 minute sitcom episode about them instead. It would also be really hard to make a TV or movie romance where two characters just gradually spend more and more time together and open up to one another, so romance in media tends to revolve around "flash points" like the first time one of them says "I love you" or the first time they have sex.
That’s a good point, it’s definitely a part of the love bombing that occurs in the cycle of abuse.
From the movie script perspective it's just a cheap and tried way to create conflict, keep ya hooked and all. There's no drama in a reciprocal "i love you."
okay but have you considered that if the confessing partner doesn't get an "i love you" in return, that's a pretty big matzah ball hanging out there?
I have attachment issues and anxiety, so expressing any feeling is hard for me.
But the connection to movies makes me think of this article that made the rounds a few months ago.
https://bloodknife.com/everyone-beautiful-no-one-horny/
US movies and media just can't have serious emotional themes/conversations sometimes.
I accidentally blurted it out with someone I'm sleeping with. She looked at me funny and it was never brought up again
Consider the asthma trope that appears constantly on tv and in movies.
Why is it used? Because it's a super-convenient, super-lazy medical trope to juice the plot. When I see an inhaler - I cringe. Nearly always I think to myself: In about 10-15 minutes somebody is going to say: "He has asthma and we don't have his inhaler!" And that's what usually happens.
"Your Honor" with Bryan Cranston has an extended use of the trope. I would have liked the tv series more without a fucking inhaler. It's bad enough in a movie but in a tension-filled tv series once you see an inhaler - you can guess it's going to appear over and over.
What is this based on?
I think of "I love you" as the romantic trope version of an inhaler.
