I hate it when language makes it harder to communicate.
Love is an emotion1. It resides in a single mind at a time. Parents (generally) love their children, even when the children don’t feel similar feelings back. Humans often love animals or fictional entities that literally can’t love them back. And of course many adults feel love to another adult that doesn’t have the same feeling back towards them.
But in many cases you can’t simply communicate that you are having that feeling, because doing so implicitly puts obligations on the loved person. They are expected to either (A) reciprocate and therefore concede that you are now bound in a social contract of mutual support/sacrifice, or at least advancing on a escalator closing in on that, or (B) reject the other person (“that’s lovely, but I’m sorry, I don’t feel that way”) to avoid being bound/advancing in that way.
This is bullshit. This forces people who are feeling Love Feelings but that don’t want to draw someone into such a social contract to keep their feelings hidden. If somehow the fact of the emotion slips out, the other person who may have been having happy love-adjacent feelings is forced to either jump further than they’re ready for, or retreat into a much less happy position of withdrawal.
Sometimes (not uncommonly!) I am feeling happy Love Feelings and I want to convey them, but I want to say them in a way that makes it clear that:
This is an emotion I’m feeling right now. It is pleasant and I want to share that with you. I actually expect you don’t necessarily have the same feeling, and you’re just enjoying my company or cuddles or whatever, and that’s great! I am not promising dedication and resources beyond the usual that two close adults extend to each other, nor am I hinting we should advance on that track, nor do I want anything like that from you. I don’t want you to feel like you have to say anything back! This isn’t about me asking for anything, this is just me sharing a lovely emotion I’m having. I hate the feeling of hiding things from people, especially of putting on a mask of “I’m not actually feeling this way,” especially with someone I care about!
I think I’ve managed to say this successfully…. once? Maybe twice.
I wish there was a way to say this that was commonly known and accepted.
I especially wish that there was a way that people could say it to me. I’m happy to hear that I’m eliciting such feelings in people. I want to be able to say in return “I am happy for you, thank you for telling me” without feeling like I am rejecting them by not saying “I love you” in return (assuming I’m not feeling the same feeling in that moment). And I want people to have the ability to respond to my “I’m feeling love to you” statements with an “I’m happy” statement as well. It would lower the barrier to saying that in the first place.
I think the world would be a better place if we could freely tell people we are having happy love feelings without expectation or obligation. Suppressing emotions like that, the beautiful joyous emotions that make us better people, is a terrible innovation.2
citation needed
I, of course, blame monogamy-culture for this. The idea that the only legitimate expression of this emotion is to bind couples into reproductive contracts is great for forcing people into such unions. Weaponizing love like that has left us all worse off. To the point that we don’t even have the language to say certain things without a blog-post worth of explanation. :/
I have managed to say this about a dozen times, including to someone I was in a teacher/student relationship with in addition to a friend relationship, where they had possible incentive to react negatively for boundary reasons on top of the ones noted here. So far they've all gone well! Though in all cases I mostly added at least a paragraph of notes, and in one case explicitly added "I understand that your history with people saying this to you makes you trust me less, and I am confident that my future actions will validate my position and earn that trust back; I'm not interested in denying that hit to trust in the short term."
Isn't what you want more or less expressed by "I like/cherish you [a lot]"? I mean, I get that "like" and "love" are different emotions, but I think that in practice explicitly telling someone you like them already conveys many of the love emotions. And there's much less pressure to reciprocate. Even if the other person feels the need to say "I like you too", it's ok for them to truthfully say it even if they feel much weaker emotions. Kind of a motte and bailey thing, the two people assign different meanings to the same word and it's the order and enthusiasm with which you express your feelings that provides the context to deduce their depth.
Anyway, you are right that it would be nicer to outright have a word for it.