Seeking the threshold for ‘three little words’

With their relaxed pace and reflective tendencies, the holidays are the perfect time to reconnect with old friends. A phone chat with a friend from my university days ended in a most unexpected way. As our annual updates came to a natural end, she farewelled me with three little, platonic words: ‘‘I love you.’’

The muscles around my chest tightened, the back of my throat suddenly became dry, and the wheels of confusion churned inside my head. How should I respond to THAT?

She isn’t a friend with whom I have close contact. I see her every few years during visits home to America. Fun and friendly though she is, I wouldn’t describe my feelings for her as those of nearer friends on whom I rely emotionally and socially.

There are strong cultural differences between New Zealand and America that come into play. Verbal expressions of love are much more commonplace in my native country. As a child growing up in America, family gatherings would frequently end with full-body hugs from all relatives and ‘‘I love you’’ spoken into the ear of the hugged as you draw them close.

The British-reserve factor of my adopted culture discourages such glaring distribution of intimate words – I adjusted the frequency of my imparting of the phrase soon after immigrating. I hear more terms of endearment in an average two-week visit to the US than I would in a five-year period of rich familial and platonic relationships in New Zealand. As a culture, New Zealand just isn’t that comfortable with the timeless expression.

My 21-year-old Kiwi daughter snubs such constrained nonsense. She uses the phrase in her friendships frequently, with variations such as ‘‘love you so much’’ and ‘‘love you forever’’ populating many conversations and social media posts.

She argues that, even if a deep well of intimacy is not present, expressing love for a person is important in supporting that person’s endeavours, such as their dress, comments, behaviour or stance on an issue. Love, according to her view, has less to do with the reflection of inner emotions than it does with aligning your values with other people, especially online.

As I sat dry-mouthed at the end of the phone thinking about all of this, I knew that one option would be for me to take on my daughter’s casual view of expressions of friendly love.

But my instinct is to preserve its deeper value by using it only when it is really true. Saying it when tucking my kids in to bed at night or comforting a close friend feels entirely appropriate to me and doesn’t cause annoying physiological responses.

Maybe, I thought, as the short silence between us elongated to an awkward pause, I could lower the level of intimacy by removing the ‘‘I.’’ ‘‘Love you’’ sounds more light-hearted, less duty-bound; adding the personal pronoun brings more emotional punch.

Or, I could do a workaround by not using ‘‘love’’ at all. ‘‘You too,’’ might show respect for my friend’s feelings while not making me feel like I was telling an outright lie.

I then remembered the adage that goes like this: Don’t tell your friends about your indigestion. ‘‘How are you’’ is a greeting, not a question.

And so it goes that phrases can serve more than one purpose. Perhaps ‘‘I love you’’, like ‘‘how are you?’’, doesn’t have to be used in the literal sense. It was then that I remembered that, in America, it is commonly used as a salutation, a way of confirming affections in the last moments of a gathering or conversation.

So what if I did lower my standards of truth for a passing moment, allowing the cultural norms that I grew up with to override the overthinking of this moment? Would it do any harm to say some slightly untrue utterances that, in the end, would be received with gratitude by my deserving friend?

My feelings for her were, after all, very endearing and reflected decades of friendship . . . she introduced me to my first real boyfriend, made me laugh a lot when he dumped me, flatted and dieted and travelled with me, exploring our ballooning worlds of politics, education and sexuality together . . . back then.

Wasn’t that enough for me to enfold her in a decent, reciprocal response, regardless of its technical accuracy?

As the moment came when I could no longer blame internet delays for the pause in our phone conversation, four words fell out of my mouth with surprising ease: ‘‘I love you too.’’

My chest pain lifted and saliva once again wetted my mouth. I clicked off the phone with a smile, feeling a warm buzz of affection.

Maybe these holidays, I think, I will share some more heartfelt untruths with the people in my life.

I knew that one option would be for me to take on my daughter’s casual view of expressions of friendly love.