These Three Words: The Importance of Saying “I Love You”

The Language of Love

Many of us, particularly men, go through life assuming our family and friends know how we feel about them.  Rather than expressing how we feel to them directly, we expect them to figure it out at some point during the relationship. In Gary Chapman’s book, The Five Love Languages, he describes five standard ways people show love and explains how we tend to speak our own love languages to other people and assume they understand us.  We show love the way we want to receive it instead of figuring out how the other person wants to be loved.  As a result, our feelings are often left unclear to those we care about.  I am guilty of this myself, and it became evident during an experience I had with my son.

Beneath the Chaos

What started out as a normal weekend became anything but typical.  Our house was a wreck, with clutter everywhere that had built up over the course of several busy weeks in a row.  Between full time day jobs that often required overtime, coaching a basketball team, building a side business, and raising kids (helping with homework, preparing dinner, and attending acting and music lessons/events), the weeks could often seem like a blur.  During our busiest stretches we were sometimes so focused on the urgent tasks of the moment that chores like laundry and dishes got put off and piled up quickly.  Not to mention the clutter that built up from tossing items aside and promising to get to them later.  It’s amazing how quickly the messiness gets out of hand when you have a loaded schedule.

Eventually, my wife Queen and I were able to stop and get a handle on things so we could hit the reset button and start over with a clean house.  We decided to take that particular weekend to clean up the clutter and get more organized.  Our plan was to start with the bedrooms, so Queen started with our son Prince’s room while I focused on our own.  After thirty minutes or so, I was cleaning my nightstand when I felt a finger tap me on the shoulder.  I looked up and Queen handed me a slip of paper she found in Prince’s room and walked away.

Love Notes

I began reading the paper and quickly recognized it was a note I had left Prince a few months earlier during basketball tryouts.  He was nervous and feeling the pressure that comes with trying to win acceptance and prove yourself, so I wanted to reassure and encourage him.  One morning before work I left him a note telling him to simply do his best and his mom and I were proud of him no matter what happened.  I had no idea he kept the note until Queen handed it to me.  However, upon reading the note I noticed some changes.

Prince had taken a pen and crossed out any language where I referred to myself as his dad and written that I was not his real dad.  He then elaborated that I hated him and that “we don’t say I love you”.  Of all that was amended within the note, that third change was the most difficult for me to swallow.  Over and over it echoed in my head… “we don’t say I love you”.  Pointing out that I’m not his real dad is simply stating a fact and somewhat to be expected at some point in his childhood.  I am technically his step dad, even though I have been raising him since he was five years old and have never used the word “step” to refer to either of us.  The part about me hating him was extremely upsetting because of how much I love him, but children do the reverse and say they hate their parents sometimes when they are upset.  I didn’t like it, but it wasn’t unheard of, and I knew at times Prince could be quite dramatic and say things he didn’t really mean.  However, “we don’t say I love you” really stood out to me because it was completely under my control and I knew there was truth to it.  It also hit a sore spot because, in spite of working so hard to meet all of Prince’s needs, I had failed in an area that was extremely important yet so simple.

Once I read his words I instantly knew when Prince must have written the remarks.  A few weeks earlier we had an intense conversation about his homework and chores in which I had to punish him for being irresponsible.  He was approaching his teens and getting mouthier by the day, which typically doesn’t go well between fathers and sons if you know what I mean.  I told him what he did wrong, then stated my expectations and demanded he do better.  He talked back to defend himself, then I clamped down even harder. Both of us left the conversation pretty agitated, and he apparently released his frustrations on paper.

Man Down

Even though I knew Prince didn’t handle anger well and that the remarks were likely written when he was upset, the comments still cut like a sharp blade.  One of my biggest fears as a step dad was that I would fail Prince in some area where his biological dad wouldn’t have.  Prince’s bio dad has always stayed involved in his life, but since I am the man who is present each and every day and doing most of the child rearing, I have always held myself responsible for Prince’s well-being.  I had been parenting Prince the best I knew how, so reading those words was like a punch in the gut because they were proof that my best simply hadn’t been good enough.  Despite my best efforts, I was letting my son down and he was questioning whether I truly loved him.

Now when I say, “my best efforts”, let me hammer home what that really means.  There are different types of dads in the world.  Traditional dads are primarily providers who work, come home, and believe their job is done and shy away from dealing with housework, homework, or emotional needs of their families.  Some of those dads are rarely home at all.  Then there are dads who are extremely helpful around the house and attentive to the non-material needs of their families, but they are not very ambitious professionally in terms of providing financially.  Finally, there are fathers out there who go above and beyond to provide financial security as well as participate in household duties and tend to each family member’s emotional, mental, and spiritual needs.

I have always done my best to be the third type of father.  I work hard on my job, manage household finances, do daddy daughter dates and father son outings, coach my son’s basketball team, help with homework, do family game nights, and ask about what is going on at school and how my kids are feeling.  I make every deliberate effort I can think of to stay in tune with and address all my family’s needs.  This is why discovering I had overlooked one of my son’s most basic needs (the need to feel loved) practically knocked the wind out of me.  The acts of service I was performing for him simply weren’t enough.  He needed to hear me say the words, and I was falling short because of my own life experience.

Lost in Translation

“When was the last time
That they heard you say
Mother or father, I love you
And when was the last time
That they heard you say
Daughter or son, I love you

Ones you say you cherish everyday
Can instantly be taken away
Then you’d say I know this can’t be true
When you never took the time
To simply tell them ‘I love you’ “

—- “These Three Words” sang by Stevie Wonder

These three words were rarely heard in our home when I was growing up.  Now don’t get me wrong, I had AMAZING parents.  The kind of parents who overcame poverty to give my brother and I a house in the suburbs to come home to after school with Hot Pockets in the freezer and Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Froot Loops in the cupboard.  My mother grew up on food stamps and had to get a job to help her mother keep a few items of food in the pantry for her five siblings to eat.  As an adult, mom didn’t even know how to drive until I was around ten years old.  Since we didn’t own a car we often walked to the store to get what we could afford to buy.  My dad and a friend of hers eventually taught her how to drive, and I remember my parents getting my mom her first car.  Eventually they bought a house and, with hard work, earned a good enough living that my brother and I drove our first cars at sixteen years old and ultimately graduated from college.  To say they made lemonade out of lemons is an understatement, and they passed the same work ethic and life principles down to us.  They passed down how to provide and meet the practical needs of our loved ones, along with an appreciation for the value of an education. What they did not pass down was what my son would need from me decades later.  They didn’t pass down the words.

“These three words
Sweet and simple
These three words
Short and kind
These three words
Always kindles
An aching heart to smile inside”

Man Up

So here I was, raising a son of my own, being asked for words I had never been given.  I definitely felt loved growing up, but my parents communicated it primarily through actions, not words.  In the rare instances where I did hear the words, they came from my mom, not my dad.

Until this day, my dad struggles to say the words.  He says them, but reluctantly and awkwardly.  It’s something the men in my family are just not comfortable saying, especially to one another.  So how?  How was I going to break the cycle?  How could I bridge the gap and give my son the one form of affection that he needed to feel loved when it was never modeled for me by the men in my life?  Not only did I need to say it, but it needed to be natural… to be real… to be consistent.  He needed to feel it.

I didn’t have all the answers for how to do what was needed, but I knew one thing… I had to try.  I made a commitment to myself to say the words whenever my son or I was leaving and before bed at night.  It felt awkward at first because neither of us were used to interacting that way.  The words felt funny coming out of my mouth, and Prince didn’t quite know how to respond initially.  But after a few times, what happened was nothing short of amazing.

Sons, Teach Your Fathers

After a week or two of me initiating the words, saying them became more and more comfortable for both of us.  Suddenly, Prince began saying them first, and it felt wonderful.  It was much easier for me to say it back to him than to say it first.  It’s kind of funny that way.  Here I was trying to make sure my son felt my love for him, and I ended up feeling more loved myself.  I noticed our bond strengthening and we got closer and closer the more we said it.  Eventually he was running up to me and hugging me hello when I got home from work, which was an act typically reserved for his mom.  Prince’s behavior got more and more respectful, and we argued less and less.  Our entire household had been blessed with greater peace and harmony, and all from saying these three words.  The three words anyone can say.  The three words money can’t buy: I… love…. you.

“I know a family
Who hasn’t a cent to their name
And yet the joy and love they have between them
They always claim
And when one’s called from life
The survived mourn the lost
And will never be the same
Yet they rejoice
In knowing they gave them their all

These three words
Sweet and simple
These three words
Short and kind
These three words
Always kindles”

Thanks to my son, I somehow found the courage to step outside my comfort zone and do something unfamiliar to me.  As a result, a child was nurtured, a relationship was strengthened, and a cycle was broken.  My son will go into parenthood with personal knowledge of how to say “I love you” to his kids and a realization of its power in a family unit, and for that, I am extremely grateful.  Prince, thank you, and more importantly… I love you.

Is your family in the habit of saying “I love you?”  What about the men?  Do they say it to both genders?  Are there any generational habits or curses in your family that need to be changed or broken?  Have you taken steps to break any cycles?  Do you know how to speak multiple love languages or just your own?  Please share your stories so we all can grow and heal.