Grammatically speaking, love is complex and must be handled carefully. As a verb, love can be used in both the active and passive voice, but I most often use it in the active voice, especially if a man’s name is the subject of the sentence, as in John loves me. In this sentence, John is doing the loving and “me” is the recipient of the love–a comforting notion when I’m feeling lonely. Love is also best used in the present tense because if I use the past tense, as in John (or Chris or Mike) loved me, this reminds me that the man in question no longer cares about me, leading to anger and disappointment. If I do speak of a man’s love for me in the past, I usually use the passive voice so that I can easily omit the agent, as in I was loved. This grammatical construction allows me to remember the pleasant feeling of being loved while avoiding the memory of the man whose love for me has faded.

In addition to using love carefully, I avoid certain modal verbs that I have found to be useless and even harmful in romantic situations. For example, the modal should is often used for giving advice, as in, “You should love me because I have many good qualities.” Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that telling men this has little effect, even if in the same sentence I extol my excellent listening skills and love-letter writing ability; once they have dated me a few times, they inevitably conclude that I am selfish and emotionally immature and therefore do not trust my advice anyway. Using could in a question, as in Could you love me? might generate an affirmative answer, but the man usually tacks on the phrase, “but not right now.” On the bright side, he may claim that a recent heartbreak has rendered him temporarily unable to love, suggesting that circumstances, not my own qualities, have prevented his ability to form an attachment. Experience has taught me however, that this is usually just a polite cover for rejection.

Fortunately, the pain that so often accompanies love can be prevented or lessened by using hedges. Expressions, such as I think or as far as I know, enable me to signal uncertainty or lessen the impact of a statement and, in this way, help prevent the development of runaway emotions. For example, in my teens and early twenties, I often confidently announced, “He loves me” out of youthful optimism and naivete, unscarred as I was then by men’s dishonesty and fickleness. Then, in my late twenties, Ricky admitted only settling for me because the younger, much prettier woman he already loved had a boyfriend. After I recovered from that breakup and I met Glenn, I was more cautious, telling myself, “As far as I know, Glenn loves me,” which helped keep my feelings in check. When we ran into each other at a gas station a year after he broke up with me, he didn’t even remember my name, proving that he had never loved me at all. That incident demonstrated the wisdom of my caution.

Staying grounded in romantic situations is essential, and a paradoxical way I achieve this aim is by using the unreal conditional. Unreal conditionals enable me to talk about what is hypothetical or purely imaginary, as in If I met a kind, devoted and honest man, I would be happy. Note that the if clause contains a past tense verb (met) and the result clause is marked by the modal would. By contrast, a real conditional has a present tense verb in the condition clause and the modal will in the result clause: If I meet a kind, devoted and honest man, I will be happy. Because the real conditional expresses genuine possibility, implying that meeting a kind, devoted and honest man might actually happen, it gives rise to hope. The unreal version, however, places the idea in the purely imaginary realm, so using the unreal conditional actually helps prevent unrealistic hope. (Its usefulness became especially clear after the aforementioned experiences with Ricky and Glenn that taught me that love is mostly unreal anyway.)    

Perhaps it is due to the frequent unreality of love that I am so well acquainted with loneliness, a word whose –ness suffix identifies it as a noun—a person, place, thing or idea. The suffix also denotes an abstract noun and therefore an intangible (something that exists in the mind),rather than something that can be touched, such as a hand or a love letter. But if loneliness exists only in the mind, why does it bother me so much?Is it because such abstractions involve not being touched? Or is it because loneliness is not an abstraction at all but an actual place like an empty corner at a party or a table set for one? Or is it because loneliness is a person and that because I have lived with it so long, it feels like my own skin and I can therefore no longer tell the difference between me and it?  

– Catherine Kelley