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Relationships
8 Words of Love
Here are some useful ways to express your feelings.
Posted February 11, 2022 Reviewed by Davia Sills
Whether it's in your Valentine’s Day card or otherwise, you of course want to express your love as you mean to.
8 words to express love
It's certainly nice to avoid clichéd inscriptions. These words may help articulate your feelings to the one you love.
1. Ardor: passion, usually temporary
After our first date last night, my ardor for you suffused through me all day. Zephyrs of you seeped in even as I was poring over a spreadsheet.
2. Adore: loving admiration, even worship
It’s not just your looks, nor your intelligence, nor your kindness, nor your good job. It’s your totality. I just adore you.
3. Rapture: transporting ecstasy, usually transient
After all these years, I can’t say that my love for you is, as Browning wrote, the first fine careless rapture. But it is a companionable balm against life’s barbs.
4. Amorous: feeling sexual desire
Even just seeing you take your jacket off puts me in an amorous mood.
5. Smitten: suddenly so attracted that you’re overwhelmed
It was like in the movies: I was just sitting on a park bench minding my own business, and there you appeared like a lightning bolt. I was smitten.
6. Besotted: deeply infatuated, implying a bit more permanence than “smitten.”
Even after the third date, I find myself deeply, inescapably, besotted with you.
7. Infatuated: similar to smitten and besotted, this implies a measure of irrationality.
Rationally, s/he is not a good fit for me, but, God, I can't seem to help but be infatuated with him/her.
8. Enchanted: so delighted, captivated
It was almost like you put me under a spell. I was enchanted with you.
The takeaway
Using these words can inoculate against Valentine’s Day cards’ potential for cliché.
Beyond that, these words are at least aspirational. Does at least one of these words describe your feelings about your partner? It may be difficult to sustain such intense feelings over the long term, but if your emotions don’t include even transient wisps of such feelings, it may suggest the need to work on your relationship. Or does it suggest that you should consider finding a new partner? Or have you concluded that such words are merely the stuff of puppy love, fairy tales, and romance novels?
In any event, even though Valentine’s Day is but a commercially induced reason to say I love you, maybe especially in these times, any excuse is a good excuse to express your love for your partner. Perhaps these words will help you express your love as you really want to.
I read this aloud on YouTube.
Subsequent installments in this series are Nuanced Words for Anger and for Happy and Sad.
