Until my thirties, I didn’t tell my brothers or my dad that I loved them. I had never told my friends, whom I love, that I loved them. Not in person, at least. Certainly not sober. I had no problem expressing love to women: my partner, cousins, a mate I sort of liked, the neighbour’s cat. “Love you, Mum,” I’d say, waving goodbye. “And see you later, Dad.” The barrier to intimacy between brothers, male friends, fathers and sons, felt natural, a fact of life. It seemed to be a trait of modern men, one that I’d never betray.
Then, in 2023, I made the mistake of reading books on masculinity. It started with JJ Bola, Ivan Jablonka, Rebecca Solnit and RW Connell, then I got carried away with Simone de Beauvoir, Judith Butler and Audre Lorde. But one book performed a small act of sorcery: it made me question my life. The Will to Change by bell hooks felt revolutionary, full of generosity towards men, particularly tough men or men who performed toughness. It spoke of the need for us to break barriers and practise intimacy. “It is not true that men are unwilling to change,” hooks writes. “It is true that many men are afraid to change.”
So I decided to change. It might seem like a small change, but to me it felt terrifying: I’d start telling the men I love that I loved them. I started as soon as I’d finished the book. I felt so uncomfortable on the first few attempts that it activated my autonomic nervous system, triggering a fight-or-flight response. “I love you,” I declared to one of my best mates, near the barriers of Shepherd’s Bush tube station, then I ran inside and never looked back.
I would sometimes mumble the words under my breath. “Did you say something?” a friend asked. I shook my head. I’d say “Love ya” instead of “I love you” because it felt less intimate, less of a declaration. On one occasion, I whispered the words into a friend’s ear while we hugged. I pulled out of the hug and scurried away, not waiting to see his reaction. It felt effortlessly creepy, like an arrestable offence.
Reactions proved equally hilarious. One friend asked whether I was feeling OK, as if I’d been felled by an undiscovered ailment. Another stared at me, in confusion, as though I’d posed a riddle. A few mates said it back, out loud, with aplomb. Jesus, I thought, aren’t you emotionally equipped! My brothers didn’t say it back, not at first. I remember one sort of nodding, as if I’d given him a reasonable price on a secondhand car. My dad – a stoic man, much like his dad and his dad’s dad, dad infinitum – surprised me by saying it back, unabashed. It was as if I’d given him license to say it.
Others have never said it back. That’s OK. I remember being struck by this line in Connell’s Masculinities: “Men are not permanently committed to a particular pattern of masculinity. They make situationally specific choices from a repertoire of masculine behaviour.” What I understood that to mean is that masculinity is a learned thing. Our fear of intimacy is learned. That means we can unlearn and learn anew.
I hoped that saying “I love you” might help the men I love. But it mostly helped me. I found that saying three little words made me more comfortable in my vulnerabilities. I noticed that I talked more about feelings as I spoke to friends. Declaring love seemed a gateway to openness. It felt liberating. I could not stop. I opened up a little, then a little more, now I have become very open, too open, annoyingly open. I’ll talk to the lads about anything. They find it a bit gauche, I think. But I know that openness opens, and intimacy begets intimacy, because I’ve noticed a few of them opening up, too.
Saying “I love you” still feels uncomfortable. But I’ve realised it’s a small and secret superpower. I hope it reminds me and the men around me that vulnerability is a virtue – a contagious one that often nudges the world in the right direction. I still tell the men I love that I love them, still with a hangover of discomfort, but now I say it loudly and unapologetically.
