azurelunatic | How many ways are there to mean "I love you" without saying those scary words?

Darkside is allergic to dating. I would say that he's allergic to love, but he loves his family just fine. He had a bad dating experience in the past, and, from all appearances, he seems unwilling to repeat the very risky experiment.

I used to say "I love you" to him a lot. Then I eventually wised up as to exactly how much that was bothering him. I switched over to "Buffer error," because "I love you" was still the first thing that wanted to come out my mouth, but it made him uncomfortable, so I couldn't say it, but if I didn't say it, all the things behind it that I meant to say would be unsaid. But "Buffer error" meant "I love you but I can't say it because it makes you uncomfortable but I love you anyway," so I said that. And he understood.

Now I don't say either of those. Not to him. He's heard them before, but somehow he's missed out on the nuances of what love, from me, really means. So I find other ways.

In one of the

lightning_war fic-bits,

jus_ad_bellum talks about marriage. "I don't think people marry each other in front of an altar once and for all; I think they do it every day."

Little by little, I choose Darkside, and I continue to choose him, and I continue to find the words to illustrate to him what it means when I love him.

He apologized for talking to inanimate objects, more or less, tonight. This morning's e-mail's special encoding of I love you was: "I may not be an inanimate object, but I am more than happy to listen to whatever you have to say. Even if it's not to me."

How many ways are there to mean "I love you" without saying those scary words?

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