The Trouble with Romance's Monopoly on the Vocabulary of Affection

“I definitely have strong feelings for you. I just haven’t decided if they’re positive or negative yet.”

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (2010)

It occurs to me that the trouble, as it so often does, really comes down to the English language. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start, as per the usual, by sketching out an example from the world of fiction.

Apparently the heart symbol has now made it into the Oxford dictionary, which I suppose makes it the first official logogram in the English language.

When Marnie Was There is the most recent product of that greenhouse of creative brilliance that is Studio Ghibli, and a definite contender for my favourite of all the studio’s films.¹ I first saw it last term at my university’s campus cinema,² and discovered that one of the benefits of going to the cinema alone is the opportunity to eavesdrop, quite accidentally of course, on other people’s conversations about the film as they assemble their possessions and leave the auditorium. In this case, I caught a snatch of someone’s comment that she enjoyed the film, but would have preferred it if her fellow cinemagoers had managed to refrain from sniggering at what she termed, as I recall, the ‘lesbian overtones’ present in the dialogue.

Now, I might be wrong, but I’m not sure there actually are any intended lesbian overtones in When Marnie Was There. I think it is a film about female friendship, in which protagonist Anna’s interactions with the mysterious Marnie – whose real identity I won’t spoil – are deliberately contrasted with her interactions with other girls her age. Anna’s extreme shyness and insecurity are painted very empathically indeed, and it makes perfect sense that she needs the deliberate slow pace, the exclusivity, and the lack of pressure from external sources that her relationship with Marnie entails in order to learn how to do this whole friendship thing, whereas her more ordinary peers, while well-meaning, would have never offered her the space she needed to initially emerge from her shell. But all that said, I can definitely see why other people would conclude that there are lesbian overtones in the film, and I won’t claim that the notion didn’t cross my mind while I was watching it.

When they first meet, Anna tells Marnie that she had dreams about a girl just like her. Later, Marnie tells Anna that she is her ‘precious secret’ and beswears her never to tell anyone else about their friendship. Marnie teaches Anna to row and to dance and I could see how one might easily read something romantic into both scenes. And on top of all that, the two of them end up boldly confessing their love for one another more than once. “I love you more than any girl I’ve ever known,” is the line on one such occasion, if I remember rightly.

Now, there is nothing inherent within that statement that specifies that this relationship is a romantic one. We all know that ‘love’ has many shades of meaning. But it just sounds romantic, doesn’t it? Somehow it just pushes those buttons. I have, unfortunately, no idea how the original Japanese script and the way it would be most readily perceived among native speakers compare, but I’d hazard that the translators who worked on the English version may have had a pretty tough job trying to render the dialogue in a manner both accurate and not overly romanticky – because pretty much every expression of earnest affection that exists in English lends itself to a romantic interpretation.

English-speakers make a huge deal out of the significance of the phrase ‘I love you’; its being said is seen as constituting a seismic levelling-up of a romantic relationship, as we all know from such beloved sitcoms as Miranda and The Big Bang Theory.³ Even the milder ‘I like you’ has romantic connotations, hence all those rather amusing ‘well, yes, I like you, but I don’t like you’ scenes (there’s a good one in Leonardo, for which see below), and the introduction of the term ‘like like’ as opposed to just ‘like’. And again, even the arguably neutral ‘I have feelings for you’ never appears outside a romantic context, with the possible exception of that awful line in the first Percy Jackson film that book-Annabeth would never have uttered in a million years.⁴ In short, we just don’t have a vocabulary for expressing love of a non-romantic quality.

And it’s not just deep friendships between peers, like Anna and Marnie’s, that lose out because of this. Consider, for instance, a scene in Leonardo, perhaps my absolute favourite of those brilliant CBBC dramas I’m always going on about,⁵ in which the eponymous hero, a young da Vinci, hears the maestro of the workshop where he is an apprentice, Verocchio, confess to having committed manslaughter in his youth. “What do you think of your precious maestro now?” asks Verocchio, clearly ashamed. Leonardo replies, “It doesn’t change the way I feel.” And again, doesn’t that last line just sound like something someone ought to be saying in a romantic context? But it’s categorically not. This is a deep-seated, important, loving relationship – between a student and his mentor. Where’s our vocabulary for expressing meaningful affection in that context?

Then again, perhaps I’m making this out to be more of an issue than it really is. Perhaps romantic connotations aren’t nearly as ubiquitous in the English language as I’m claiming, and I’m just overly sensitive to the possibility of their presence. Still, in light of my general impermeable obliviousness about romantic matters – “So you know X and Y are a couple…” / “No! I had literally no idea!” – I have to say I think it rather unlikely. Plus, I did start this post with an example of someone other than myself reading romantic connotations into something. And also, Ed Shaw claims pretty much the same thing in the fifth chapter of his quite excellent book The Plausibility Problem.⁶ Having identified ‘sex is where true intimacy is found’ as a misconception held by many in the Church as well as in wider society, he quotes the following verse from King David’s lament for Jonathan after the latter is killed in battle:
“I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
very pleasant have you been to me;
your love to me was extraordinary,
surpassing the love of women.”⁷ 
He then comments as follows:
“Today it seems impossible for anyone to read this song without thinking that David and Jonathan must have enjoyed a sexual relationship. Didn’t you find yourself quickly sniffing out something homoerotic about them? Off the back of this one verse, some have even claimed biblical approval of gay relationships – all because David says Jonathan’s love for him was better than a woman’s. We just can’t stop ourselves.”
I’ll stop quoting there, though I’d very much encourage you to go away and get hold of the book and read the rest of it for yourself. Shaw goes on to argue that, since everybody needs intimacy, we need to cultivate intimate friendships of a non-romantic, non-sexual nature, otherwise we get that misconception in our heads that a romantic, sexual relationship is the only possible site of satisfaction of this need of ours – which isn’t any more helpful for people who are in such a relationship than for people who aren’t.

And I think that the matter of vocabulary, the monopoly that romantic (and so implicitly sexual) love holds over all verbal expressions of heartfelt affection, allowing other forms of love mere crumbs, makes no negligible contribution to this over-exaltation of romantic love as the only kind that really matters. If romance is allowed to hoard for herself the vocabulary of true affection, isn’t the inevitable result that we start to think that she is the only place where true affection can actually be found? If any earnest confession of feelings of love is automatically seen as carrying romantic implications, isn’t the inevitable result that other forms of love cease to be recognised as important?

The main character of a very enjoyable novel I once read⁸ – an alien living on earth and pretending to be human, and incapable of experiencing romantic love – puts it like this: “I hate it when people talk like friendship is less than other kinds of – as though it’s some sort of runner-up prize for people who can’t have sex. I had a boyfriend once, but I never liked being with him the way I like being with you … You’re one of the best friends I’ve ever had, Milo. And that is everything to me.”

On one level, look how hard she has to work to assemble a sentence that communicates to Milo how important he is to her without leaving space for hints at the romance she knows can never happen between them. Even ‘I never liked being with him the way I like being with you’ would sound romantic – wouldn’t it? – if it weren’t so determinedly sandwiched between a closing off of romantic possibilities. But on another level, isn’t the state of affairs she describes, where non-romantic forms of love are considered ‘less than’ options, consolation prizes for those who can’t manage to attain to the best thing, as accurate as it is saddening? I’m not saying that vocabulary is the only or even the primary factor responsible for fostering such a state of affairs, but it is surely a factor.

All right, so I’ve made my point: seeing romantic connotations in every verbal expression of love, and thus pretty much excluding all forms of love except romance from the opportunity to be verbally expressed, unavoidably contributes to an undervaluation of these other forms of love, a lack of recognition of them, and so a spurning of everything they have to offer in favour of harmfully excessive exaltation of romantic love. What exactly am I suggesting we do about it?

Well, I suppose the most obvious thing to suggest is that we start trying to reclaim the vocabulary of love for use in non-romantic contexts. I feel I should make clear that this is very much an exhortation from the gutter rather than a helping hand held down from a position of superiority: I am as awkwardly British as anybody, and telling people I care about them doesn’t come easily to me in any circumstance, let alone in a fashion deliberately designed to overstep social boundaries. If I am going to be a part of my proposed revolution, I am going to need a lot of help. But then again, so, I imagine, are some of you; and I know how much it has meant to me when a friend has signed off a letter with ‘I love you very much’, or included ‘you are a treasure and a blessing’ in a Christmas-wishes text; and, from little instances like these, I am, baby-step by baby-step, learning; and I state my humble intention, in light of what I’ve said, to try. 

Footnotes 

¹ Fancy a trailer? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WASWpDAFOe4. 

² Because I never pass up an opportunity to plug Campus Cinema: http://campuscinema.co.uk/. 

³ I talk about the relevant Miranda episode in ‘Thoughts on Love 2: Luvvou’, under ‘2015’ and ‘October’ in the box on the right. The Big Bang Theory one I’m thinking of is S3 E19, ‘The Wheaton Recurrence’. I’m sure you can think of your own examples; these were just the first couple that came to mind in my case. 

⁴ Seriously, I know the book’s pretty much always better than the film, but in the case of Percy Jackson this is the case to a quite ludicrous extent. Here’s some very stylish artwork depicting a number of the key characters, http://rickriordan.com/characters/, because why not. 

⁵ Aw, just watching the trailer made me really happy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0VSpmyy4UM. Shame it only got two series, but better that it go out on a high than suffer a slow and painful retreat into lame mediocrity. Like some series I could mention. Ahem. 

⁶ Well argued and much needed: https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/the-plausibility-problem. 

⁷ Here’s the whole chapter, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+sam+1&version=ESVUK, but if you’re unfamiliar with the story of David and Jonathan, aka Greatest Bromance Ever, you should work through 1 Samuel first for added emotional impact. 

⁸ The novel in question was Quicksilver by R. J. Anderson, a sequel of sorts to Ultraviolet but probably my favourite of the two: http://www.rj-anderson.com/book/quicksilver/.