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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."

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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.

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