Declaring your love too soon can be a mistake (Picture: Monika Muffin for Metro.co.uk)

‘I love you’.

These three little words are romantic grenades – they have the power to change the course of your relationship, for better or worse.

How I Do It: Meet the mum-of-two who has sex all day, every day

With great power comes great responsibility. I think it was Voltaire who said that – or Spider-Man, one or the other, anyhow – and deciding when to say I love you is as important as how, where or why.

Say it too early and you’re that person, the one people cross the room at parties to avoid. Too late, however, and you may find the moment has passed.


So how do you know when you’ve reached the right time?



Helpfully, the government has done some research. A recent YouGov poll of 3,947 Brits found that the most popular time to say I love you was within the first three months of a relationship.

That’s right: 22% of us wait two to three months to make the declaration.

This is in contrast to the 14% who wait four to six months, the 6% who take a year and an unlucky 3% of folks who have never told their partner they love them (maybe time to move on?).

At the other end the spectrum are the speedy lovers, who blurt out I love you within a month (13%) or even a week (3%).

The takeaway is that there is no perfect time to say I love you and every relationship is different.

That said, there are some markers, some signposts along the relationship road, that can help you work out whether you’re nearing the right time.

Here are just a few.

When you’re sure

Sometimes you just know (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

The French have two different ways of saying ‘I know’. The first, je sais, is used to refer to a fact, something concrete.

The second, je connais, alludes to something with which you’re familiar.

What they are telling us is that there is disparity between knowing something for certain and believing it to be true. This is never more applicable then when it comes to love.

Don’t say I love you until tu sais. If in doubt, say nothing at all.

When you’re ready

Once you’re sure, you need to be ready (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Similarly, knowing that you’re in love and being ready to say so are unique propositions.

There are many factors that inhibit us from saying I love you: fear, uncertainty, a bad past experience.

Being ready to say those three little words means you’ve conquered these demons and feel confident that you’ll cope if – oh lordy – your beloved doesn’t say it back.

Saying I love you is a big deal. If you feel pressured or overwhelmed, let’s assume it’s not the right time.

When you’ve dated a few other people

Other relationships will help you learn what love is (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Knowing what love is can be as much about knowing what it’s not. For instance, love is a warm, fuzzy buzz; a constant sense of contentment; a feeling of security.



Love is not wanting to rip their clothes off; thinking they’re hilarious; finding their company perfectly pleasant.

Love is relative. The best way to know when you are truly in love is by comparing your feelings to past relationships, so it helps if you’ve had some.

When you’ve been intimate in other ways (no, I don’t mean sex)

You need to have had emotional intimacy (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

The received wisdom is that we ‘fall’ in love – I would like to counter that this is a misnomer.

Really, the phrase should be ‘climbing into love’ or ‘gradually transitioning into a state of love having completed incremental, preparatory stages’. I concede that the wording might need work.

Despite what Disney/Anne Hathaway movies espouse, love is the summation of sentiment, having spent time getting to know someone.

We don’t jump from the first handshake to declaring love, we grow gradually closer over time by sharing our fears and our secrets, being vulnerable and seeing the best and the worst of each other.

These experiences will either put us off a partner or endear them to us further. Eventually there will come a point where you have seen, said and discovered enough to have feelings that are deeper than ‘like’.

Think of saying I love you as the final cherry atop a delicious yet carefully constructed cake that has taken, on average, three months to make.

When they’ve said it first

Of course, you could just wait for them to say it first (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Technically, this is cheating, but we do say I love you with the expectation that the recipient will say it back.

(If you never experienced a deathly, tumbleweed silence after pouring your heart out, then I suggest you say I love you to the barista at your local Starbucks, just so you know what it feels like.)


The simple way to avoid this humiliation is to wait until your partner has said I love you first, at which point you can parrot it back to your heart’s content.

When you can’t wait any longer

If you’re bursting with love, you kind of don’t have a choice (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

I don’t necessarily advocate this manoeuvre, but I do speak from experience.

I hadn’t planned to tell my first boyfriend that I loved him on a Tuesday afternoon in January. We were in his room at university, he said something, I laughed and, as my guffaws subsided, it just slipped out.

He stopped what he was doing and looked at me. ‘What?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ I replied, desperately wondering if my passport was in date and how much it would cost for a one-way ticket to Guatemala.

Fortunately, he did say it back. If you genuinely feel nauseous from trying to hold the words in, then hell, let them out. You can’t help how you feel.

Just be prepared for that tumbleweed.

When things are calm

Don’t say it when you’re stressed/angry/upset (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

Heightened emotional situations can make us do things we would never usually consider, such as getting your top lip pierced after the beloved cat from your childhood dies… which obviously I have never done.

After a shock, trauma or intensely emotional experience, our instinct is to communicate our overwhelming feelings, reaffirm our relationships and cement our bonds.

This is a perfectly natural response, but don’t be fooled into mistaking it for real love. Once the emotion wears off, you’ll be left feeling like a right lemon.

When you’ve been together longer than a week

To the 3% of you who dropped the L bomb within seven days… it will never last.


MORE: 35% of us in relationships are still regularly using dating apps

MORE: Please pipe down about age gap relationships being doomed to fail

MORE: Twitter users are ending relationships in just 5 words and they’re hilarious

Advertisement Advertisement