How to handle the 'L-Bomb'

[Taser]

Throughout my life, I knew there was some baffling set of “rules” that women expected me to follow. I didn’t find those rules laid out coherently until discovering the DJ community. Applying DJ principles has given me more success in a shorter time than I previously thought possible. The DJ Bible is my religion.

I’ll start with my question, then fill in the background.

First, the question: How can I (applying DJ principles) respond to Ms. HB’s spoken and written exultations of Love?

Now, some background:

I’ve been seeing Ms. HB (a psychologist who’s at least as smart as I am) for almost 7 months. I have to employ DJ principles shrewdly because she tends to reflect my methods back on me.

Things have moved beyond the casual stage, which is fine with me. Although my initial goal wasn’t a LTR, I want to see where this leads. We’ve agreed to exclusivity, but I’ve made it clear that for me not to see others, certain expectations must be met. So far, Ms. HB has done smashingly. Her IL is sky-high.

She wrote me a touching love letter and has said she loves me on several occasions. I haven’t verbally responded. She’s hinted that a letter from me would be appreciated. However, if I simply adopt her tone in my letter, I’d come off as very AFC.

I’d like to hear my fellow DJs’ thoughtful suggestions before deciding how to handle this.

 

[joekerr31]

she wants to know where this is going.

you're at a dangerous phase right now. if you don't commit she's going to soon ask herself why she's wasting time on you.

either jump in or get ready to walk away.

if shes hot, educated, you get along well, and she is mature and sensible sounds like you found a keeper.

do you want to be a DJ forever? if you're ready to settle down and this girl has it all then don't let the opportunity pass you by.

 

[JustDoItAlways]

The "L Bomb" is almost always a bomb.

You don't need to say it, you don't need to write it, you might need to show it.

The odds are when you tell a girl you love her, she loses 20 IL points (within a day after she thinks about it.) If she is at 69 IL, you are done. If she is at 90, you've lost a lot of ground that you have to make up afterward.

Think about it this way, if her IL is at 80, does telling her you love her (or writing some sappy letter) increase it to 90? Never. The odds are it just goes the other way.

 

[joekerr31]

i have to disagree with the concept that saying you love someone drops IL.

in the first six months i agree.

but if you have a long standing relationship, at some point you're going to have to state whether you love your woman or not.

what does happen however, after you say the love word, is that a lot of women will then think 'YES. I've got him."

at which point they will start to speak their mind more freely and start nagging you or whatever. suddenly they no longer feel as though they have to 'impress' you like before, because by using the love word you've agreed to mutual exclusivity.

its still easy as pie to keep the IL up. all it entails is not letting her get away with slacking off in the relationship.

most guys get screwed by the love word because they become AFC's after they say it.

if you always see yourself as the PRIZE you can say whatever the hell you want and it wont effect IL level.

if you act like an AFC, no matter what you say IL will drop.

 

[grinder]

Without getting quite a bit more detail you may get more generic answers on what to do. Like, how old are you? How many relationships have you been in? Have your sorted through many, many women and, hence, have a good frame of reference from which to judge when you actually do bump into a good one? And, of course, do you actually, gulp, ‘love’ her?

If you’ve been on this site a while you have noted several differing “schools of thought” on DJism. So you know you will get different suggestions which may seem confusing.

I think all schools agree on one thing: DON’T STOP OR CHANGE WHAT YOU ARE DOING. Why, because its working.

I don’t think a ****y “I know” response is appropriate. Nor is completely ignoring or avoiding the subject.

Why must you have to TELL her how you feel; why not SHOW her. So, you can respond to her letter and expectations with action, not words, and even tell her that’s your response. By getting into letter-writing and convos about feelings you are (hate to borrow this term) risking letting her set the frame, or control your frame.

I don’t think it’s a mistake either to use the L word, unless, like jokerr31 states, you start acting like an AFC afterwards. You could say it but make damn sure you keep doing whatever you are doing now because it is obviously working.

 

[Sean O]

The DJ Bible is my religion.

There's your problem. Read this to gain some perspective on the DJ Bible. Also read this to gain some perspective on your situation. You'll soon realize that it's not against the "rules" to tell a woman you love her. If she loves you, and you honestly love her too, go ahead and say it. The key principle with the whole "showing interest" thing is to never show more interest in her than she does in you.

On another note: grinder and joekerr31 gave good advice. However, JustDoItAlways is likely taking the material on this site too seriously, just like you are. I mean no offense to anyone, but I honestly pity people who have to do things like think of interest in terms of a score out of 100, and then go as far as to ignore their own better judgement and take some of the overcompensating advice given on this site as divine gospel. You'll understand what I mean by "overcompensating" when you read the first link I included in this post.

 

[realsmoothie]

If you DO love her, than tell her. Otherwise you're just lying to her and yourself.

 

[JustDoItAlways]

I honestly pity people who have to do things like think of interest in terms of a score out of 100,

Scoring Interest Level out of 100 comes from Doc Love who has a big impact on this site over the years.

http://www.sosuave.com/doclove/default.htm

Taser used it in his original post "Her IL is sky-high" so I thought he'd understand a post using it.

So for everyone who has actually told a girl "I love you" or wrote a sappy I love you letter to her, please tell us what happened after you did it. How many relationships have you had where you said it and what happened in those cases as well.

My personal experience is that things go immediately downhill afterwards. I have also had lots of relationships where I never said it and I was the one who moved on in all these cases, not her.

An old poster named Anti-Dump bore a very close resemblance to Doc Love if you want to learn a little more. Do a search or here's a link to threads started by him.

http://www.sosuave.net/forum/search.php?searchid=265455

He says you should say I love you very sparingly, not in the first 6 months and only say it once for every 30 of hers.

 

[Cod3r]

^ ^ Ok, I feel sorry for you as well... no offense

So for everyone who has actually told a girl "I love you" or wrote a sappy I love you letter to her, please tell us what happened after you did it. How many relationships have you had where you said it and what happened in those cases as well.

I've said 'I love you' FIRST two times out of the 6 or 7 relationships I've had in my life. I've never been broken up with and all the females have been head over heels for me, didn't go downhill at all, things actually got better. I think you need more experiences or meet better quality women...


-Cod3r

 

[Sean O]

Scoring Interest Level out of 100 comes from Doc Love who has a big impact on this site over the years.

http://www.sosuave.com/doclove/default.htm

Taser used it in his original post "Her IL is sky-high" so I thought he'd understand a post using it.

I see. I apologize for the misunderstanding.

My personal experience is that things go immediately downhill afterwards. I have also had lots of relationships where I never said it and I was the one who moved on in all these cases, not her.

Like Cod3r said, you probably just got unlucky and met lesser-quality women.

An old poster named Anti-Dump bore a very close resemblance to Doc Love... He says you should say I love you very sparingly, not in the first 6 months and only say it once for every 30 of hers.

I am familiar with Anti-Dump, and I think the idea of saying it once for every 30 of hers is pretty ridiculous. I think a more reasonable guideline would be to say "I love you too" more often than you say "I love you", i.e. let her initiate it more often than you do.