At the age of sixteen, I boarded a flight from Australia to the USA as an exchange student. Part of the study abroad experience included retreats with other international exchange students. Despite our cultural differences, we were essentially all the same.
Without exception, everyone was intent on learning and teaching each other profanities and how to say ‘I love you’ in the various languages. To this day, I remember expressions of love in two languages.
Icelanders say, ‘Ég elska þig.’ It’s pronounced ‘Yug elska thig’. So, it’s not nearly as strange as it first appears, but it sounds humorous to the English speaker’s ear.
To me, the German expression sounds like dirty talk. In fact, it sounds rather like a dirty invitation. ‘Ich liebe dich.’
Or is it just me?
However, I challenge you to think about how ‘I love you’ sounds to a non-English speaker. Hear it with fresh ears.
Say it out loud. I dare you.
See that wasn’t so hard, was it?
Not so romantic upon close scrutiny. But still, its meaning holds power and has the ability to make someone melt or run for the hills, depending on the circumstances. Apparently, there are over seven thousand recognised languages in the world. Almost all of them have words for love and a way of expressing the declaration, ‘I love you’. Love is a universal human experience.
Let’s not debate what love is or is not; the difference between romantic love, platonic love and familial love, or whether it’s simply a temporary result of a hormone release or something deeper like a spiritual connection. It’s fair to say, aside from psychopaths, we have all felt love and have been in love at some point in our lives. If not, there’s always a good romance novel that can take you there.
Then there is unhealthy obsession or infatuation. Once, I hid in the very fancy loos of the Stamford Plaza Hotel at a family wedding to cry over a man who I had not even kissed. Witnessing the couple’s ultimate happiness despite apparent obstacles intensified the frustration I felt about the man who in one breath professed an interest and in the next, reasons for not acting on it. There had been years of on-again, off-again flirting, deep conversations and admissions of mutual attraction and yet it never progressed beyond that, despite me doing everything bar pull out the signal flags to direct him to the landing strip.
It probably wasn’t good for me. He obviously wasn’t that into me. Regardless, I was hooked. I walked away so many times, but something always brought me back. I thought it was a special connection. Hormones were most likely to blame, the main culprit being dopamine which is highly activated by random reward. Remember the laboratory mice trained to consistently press a leaver to release their food by having the device unreliably and intermittently dispense a tit bit. That was me, craving the next random feel-good moment.
It’s the type of anticipation that’s born of restraint, obstacles and unfulfilled desire that makes a romance novel such a delicious read, but alleluia with a romance novel you’re guaranteed a payoff in the end. The characters develop emotionally, the obstacles are overcome, they finally get it on and all is right with the world.
Despite knowing the ending of romance novels, we still love to read them. The power is in the anticipation. The joy is in the journey. The greater the obstacles, the more satisfying the payoff.
My character, Gina, in the romantic comedy, The Unlikely Teacher, has an attachment to an unavailable man, a co-worker who recently dumped her to return to his ex. Gina leaps at an opportunity to escape it all by taking a job teaching English in Taiwan. Here her co-teacher, Trent, provides a welcome distraction, but he is strictly off limits. She refuses to mix work and romance again. Plus there’s that little matter of her forged credentials and the fact that he is the son of her boss. Despite her best efforts, she can’t ignore him or their growing attraction. Now she must come to terms with her own emotional unavailability to be able to recognise true love. Maybe she’ll have to learn how to say, ‘I love you,’ in another language. But not before her ex turns up to try to win her back.