Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
Here's one thing that I often notice in american media: Characters make a huge fuss about saying they love each other, even after being boyfriend and girlfriend for weeks or months. It's treated as almost the same thing as proposing marriage. Is that just for drama or really how things are in America?
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So it might be that the american phrase "I love you" means something entirely different then the german phrase "Ich liebe dich". As said, I am not an expert on typical German relationships, but my assumtption always was that "Ich liebe dich" signals that you have passed from the stage of interest to the stage where you are really serious about it and have the intention to start the first steps to a long-term relationship. ... In such a relationship, even kissing before saying "I love you" seems highly inappropriate to me. Or you have to say it immediately after.
You make the "American" style sound very similar to the "German" one, to me
I've only ever been in love with one person. And yeah, it was a pretty big deal when I told him I loved him. It even carried over into other aspects of my life - before then, I didn't really tell anyone that I loved them. When the topic of love came up with my then-boyfriend (yeah, we had a full-blown discussion on the matter), he was shocked and saddened: he told his family and even his friends that he loved them all the time. He sort of "convinced" me to tell my family (and very, very rarely, my friends) that I love them frequently, and that's carried over even though we've long since split up. I'm still funny about it in the Relationship context, though...