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I Want You 17 February 2003 Well, Valentine's Day has been and gone. I received five Valentines. Four actually, since one was incestuous. And of the four, one was by phone text and the other three were e-mails. And none of them was anonymous. (To be honest, the incestuous one was, but she left so many clues that I immediately knew who it was.) And while they all hoped that I would enjoy the day, none of them carried the magic words "I love you." Ah, well... So while I was shaving, I reassured myself that there was one person in the room who loved me and who would look after me and stay with me for the rest of my life. It's full of dangers, that phrase "I love you". For a start, it's not universal. Yes, we say it, as do the French (je t'aime), the Germans (ich liebe Dich), the Scandinavians (variations on jag älskar dig) and the Chinese (wo ai ni). But the Iberians don't tell you they love you, they say "I want you" (te quiero in Spanish and te quero in Portuguese), while the Dutch inform their intended "I hold onto you". (ik hou van jou). The Greeks tell you to your face "s'aghapo", which means my love for you is pure, but tell their friends "erotevomai"; we might translate it as "I've fallen in love", but it is closer in meaning to "I am in lust". It's not surprising that there are these differences. Love is a chameleon, changing its meaning according to its surroundings. To quote a work of mine, The Benefactor, "Take a sixteen year old girl and her boyfriend. They both say "I love you", but while's she's thinking of marriage and children the only thing on his mind is sex. A mother tells her baby she loves him when she means she'll protect and take care of him. A five year old loves his grandmother because she gives him sweets. A madman stalking a filmstar says he loves her. A gay man uses the same words with his lover. An actor receiving an Oscar loves his audience. A priest loves his god. "So many meaning for so many people. So many emotions in that one four-letter word. I want your body. I want your money. I'll die for you. I'll die without you. I won't let you live without me. I worship you. I need you. I hate you. So when you talk to me about love, what is the meaning of the word to you?" In the play, that question was addressed to the young Adrian, who had an ideal of love in his head that was ultimately little more than a summary of all pop songs and romantic films that suggest that there is the perfect partner out there, young, handsome and totally devoted to us. In the end Adrian finds love where he least expects it. Some of us find that kind of love and live with our partners for years, but, if my wide circle of friends and acquaintances is a representative sample (and they should be, because they span the globe and the years), then most of us find that kind of love for only a short time and some of us never find it. But that does not mean we do not love, only that love has a different meaning. I probably love my ex more strongly now that we have separated and are certain never to live together again. As a couple, once the initial euphoria of falling in love had passed, I was often slightly nervous that I was not pleasing him or he was not pleasing me. Now that we are friends, but close friends, with a common history and strong affection for each other, I can love him unreservedly. The same is true for other friends, whom I might meet once a week, once a month or once a decade. They are people for whom I have felt a growing affection since we met and for whom I would do almost anything they asked. Whether they feel the same about me is irrelevant. Friendship and love cannot be based on conditions. Then there is Josephine, who is currently squatting between me and the keyboard, noisily licking her legs and paws. I know she does not love me. The closest she get is need and trust, but that is irrelevant. I love her precisely because she needs me. Finally, there is the family. Smaller than most, and forbidden by our Scottish Presbyterian upbringing from being as close as we might like, we irritate each other frequently, but not to the extent that it obliterates a genuine affection for and respect for each other. But the emotion, or emotions, that I feel for friends, family and cat are very different from the torrent of emotions that go through one with the person one hopes is one's life partner. And these emotions, as the above extract suggests, differ very much from individual to individual. After all, the man who beats his wife does so because he loves her, although others might describe that emotion as desire to control and fear of loss. And the couple who love each other at eighty almost certainly have different feelings than the ones that brought them together in their thirties. And so on and so on. The real issue, of course, is that our language is impoverished and we have only this one four-letter word to describe a myriad of emotions. Sometimes I think that we should become more sophisticated and be able to describe each nuance of affection, desire and respect. At other times I like the vagueness because it allows us to hide our true feelings from each other and from ourselves. We need an element of mystery and uncertainty in life. What is important is that that mystery remains a positive, beneficial aspect of our lives and of the lives of the ones we love. 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