My Mom Helped Me Tell A Girl I Love Her

You don’t “just know” you’re in love.

If you Google “when should you say I love you,” the general consensus in the academic meets pop culture canon is within three months. Some articles suggest it’s okay to say, “I love you,” in as soon as three weeks. There’s no hard and fast rule. Context matters. Just like when should you have sex for the first time.

In this article, I explain how my Mother — seemingly out of nowhere — gave me the confidence to say, “I love you,” at roughly the six-week mark.

But first, we tinker with the vague notion of “you’ll just know.”

No. You won’t just know. This is blind faith. As Bruce Springsteen famously said:

Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.

There’s a basis, a foundation — be it practical or intellectually elusive — for everything in life.

Things happen that lead you to knowing. If things you’ve always been afraid of or never felt confident to put in front of somebody else (or even yourself) don’t happen in a relationship, I’m not sure you’re truly in love. You might love and care about someone, but you’re not deeply, madly, and unconditionally in love with them.

I say this with 45 years of life under my belt, a roughly 15-year marriage, a subsequent 15-month relationship over and out, and a decent size handful of interpersonal and intimate relationships with an assortment of women as well as one casual encounter with a man.

Once you really know, you rip off the BAND-AID (or a generic brand bandage) and act. You say, “I love you.” It’s a liberating feeling. One I hope I can help you make sense of.

Let’s consider these “things” I refer to alongside the anxiety that goes hand-in-hand with saying — when put together — three of the most meaningful words in our collective vocabulary.

I’ve been in hundreds of intense life situations, yet it took the words of my Mother to give me the push to tell “Guapa” I love her.

It wasn’t that my Mom let me know that I love this girl. She merely confirmed what I already knew. However, I didn’t “just” know.

Things happened.

Full confessional disclosure: I love to read “women’s magazines.” When I need an answer about love and relationships, I go to one of two places — the academic literature or “women’s magazines.” (What a stupid characterization. Are we even using it any longer?).

For this article, a November 2020, piece in Cosmopolitan was all I required. In 20 Guys Reveal the Moment They Felt Ready to Say ‘I Love You,’ a couple of vignettes resonated with me.

First, 29-year old Jason:

“I’m going to be super cliché here, but it really did just hit me randomly one night when we were watching Netflix. I’m not sure what happened, but it was like, in that moment, I knew that I’d be okay doing anything — literally anything — with that girl by my side. And be completely happy doing it.”

I can’t speak for Jason, but I assume Cosmopolitan left out the specifics of his so-called randomness.

It hit me similarly with Guapa on multiple occasions early on, though two stick out.

I relayed the story of one in a recent Medium article:

You schedule a hike for less than a week later. It’s pouring rain that day. I mean pouring rain. You don’t ask if she wants to cancel. You ask if she wants to do something else. Because you want to see her again.

She says, “No, let’s go!” You think she’s just being agreeable. You pull up to the trail. It’s pouring rain. Fucking tiny pellets of hail bounce off of your windshield. This is going to be a disaster.

The hail stops. The rain slows, but it’s still pouring. She says, “You wanna make a break for it.” You barely have a chance to answer and she’s out the door, slipping and sliding through what’s best described as mud flow. You know right then and there. You’ve found someone beyond special.

You spent two hours in the mud and pouring rain, and she loved every minute of it. You loved every minute of it.

The other involves openness about sex.

There are things I’ve always fantasized about doing sexually. Things, probably thanks to my childhood, I never consciously thought about until I was in my thirties. For many of the people I grew up around, these things would make me gay or, at the very least, less of a man. You could say I was sexually repressed. Until I entered my deep thirties, I protected my masculinity. What a waste of time.

In recent years, I considered my seemingly nasty sexual desires — fantasized about doing them — with women I had been with. In almost every single case, it stopped there. I couldn’t get past the embarrassment of saying, “I’d really love to try this. It turns me on to think about.”

In the rare instance where I actually brought it up, I couldn’t follow through with the act in the moment. I was too self-conscious. I could not free myself from stigma, embarrassment, whatever it was that held me back.

With Guapa, there’s no holding back. I’d literally do anything with her — sexually and otherwise. I feel zero judgment. No embarrassment. Every experience we have — verbal, physical, both — contains zero traces of stigma.

There’s a comfort level between us I never thought possible.

Twenty-seven year old, Mason R., took it a step further for the Cosmopolitan read:

“I knew I was ready to say ‘I love you’ when saying ‘I like you’ just wasn’t cutting it in my heart. I felt like I could tell her anything about me or what was on my mind and I wouldn’t be judged. I especially knew when I cared for her and her feelings as much as I did my own.”

When saying ‘I like you’ just wasn’t cutting it in my heart.

What a wonderful way to put it, dude. If you’re reading this, Mason, we need to talk.

I don’t think twice when I have conversations with Guapa. About anything. She goes there. I go there. We go there together.

But it goes beyond words.

I’m comfortable naked in front of her. I don’t hide my flaccid penis from her after sex or when I’m changing. I stand in front of the mirror in my apartment when she’s over, admiring myself. (You know you do this when you’re alone!). As I walk away from the mirror, I smack myself on the ass as we laugh about my occasional resemblance to Bradley Cooper.

I could list shit like this all day long.

However, there’s a flip side that takes us to an important conclusion. It’s sort of the opposite of the things I’ve described so far. This might just be the sweet spot. The juncture where you know you’re in love. When all of the above — or your individual variations of all of the above — coalesce with something I, at least, find truly beautiful.

While Guapa knows about many of my passions — writing about money (my main space on Medium), Canada, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Elliott Smith, Taylor Swift, cities, urban studies, academic literature — she doesn’t know everything about my affinity for them. There’s something different about how my obsessions fit within our relationship.

In the past, I needed you — specifically women I liked — to know everything about me, especially these things, right away. So I’d literally smother girls with every ounce of every thought I had and every story I had to tell about the things I care about.

It was as if there was an expiration date on the relationship. I had to compile and present a body of evidence showing what an interesting and eclectic person I am so the girl could be like, “Oh my god! You’re so amazing. I love you.”

I guess I never thought my natural, comfortable existence was enough for another person, particularly a potential partner.

Over the last few years, I discovered that this is a toxic way to function in a relationship, especially early on. In an innocent, though just as fucked up way, this is manipulative and insecure behavior.

Why did I need to bury these girls in every single thing I thought set me apart from the rest? If I didn’t learn so much from this behavior, I’d be ashamed to admit I engaged in it.

It’s one thing for your partner to know what you’re into early on. It’s entirely another to foist every boring detail — every YouTube video of Springsteen performing live or spewing wisdom in an interview — during the first few weeks of dating.

With Guapa, I feel like there’s time. But there isn’t just time. There’s no need. She likes me for me. Not the me with a nice ass or varied interests. The me who walks into the room; smiles; looks at her with equal parts love, adoration, and admiration; gently places my hand on the side of her face and kisses her forehead. That’s the person who I have always felt deserved to be loved.

I never found a person I felt comfortable being that person with. I have never really wanted to be that person with anyone else.

My mother asked why I was calling her so much lately.

I told her that Guapa just left and, when she leaves, I miss her. So I like to talk to someone for a few minutes.

My mother’s response:

Rocco, you’re in love with this girl. No offense to anybody else you’ve been with, but there’s a difference between loving somebody and being in love. You’re in love. I’ve never seen you like this. I hope she feels the same way.

My mother has never talked to me that way. With so much genuine emotion, care, and concern. She wasn’t even yelling at me or chasing me around the dining room table with a wooden spoon.

The next night Guapa told me to come by her studio when she was done working for “a kiss.” It has become my favorite part of the day.

We often tell one another when we talk to our Mothers. This time it was an intentional tell. I told her my Mom was “insightful” lately.

Guapa inquired.

I told her I said something nice about her to my Mom. Guapa cut me off — “You can’t just say you said something ‘nice.’ You have to say what it is.”

So I relayed the same version of the phone call I just told you.

As we sipped scotch in the darkened storefront window, she let me finish with a look in her eyes that indicated she had some inkling of what was coming.

Then she said, “Are you in love, Rocco?” Bold move, beautiful. Me encanta.

I replied, “Yes. I am in love with you, Guapa.” (Though I called her by her real name).

She looked at me and, without hesitation, said, “Well, I’m in love with you too, Rocco.”

As she stood up, having already answered the forthcoming question, she asked if we needed “more scotch.” I replied in the affirmative. We both laughed. We sipped more scotch. We spent the next little while discussing the idea that, yes, we love each other and exactly what does this mean.

My Mother and I don’t always see eye to eye. I hate her politics. She hates that I think I’m smarter than her. (Even though I am). However, I’m willing to admit she has something to do with both my intelligence and book smarts.

I’m also quite confident — as a parent myself — that Moms are probably the only ones who can just know. But they also “see things.” I’m just grateful my Mother had the courage to say something as I allowed myself to be vulnerable with her.

Because I like you just wasn’t cutting it in my heart.