Anachostic

Welcome to February, the month of lovers, where survivors and castaways of Dump Month find new hope.  Also, half home to Aquarius, despite whatever the fuck those people that think they can change the astrological calendar think.  In the spirit of this month, I wanted to do something a little XKCD-y, which was predicated on my wandering thoughts on the simple question, “Do you love me?”

“Do you love me?”  This question is more polarizing than say, “Are you a Trump supporter?”  Whereas an answer to the latter will give you a pretty good indication of how well your relationship is going to work out, the former simply brings up more questions.

First, let’s list through some context scenarios.  In no case is any answer a safe answer.  Consider if any of the following came up to you and asked, “Do you love me?”

1. Friend
2. Co-worker/colleague/superior
3. Significant other
4. Family member/pet
5. Stranger

I say that there is no correct answer in any case.  That is because yes and no are absolutes, while love is not an absolute.  There are limitless types of love.  Here is another helpful list of potential love types:

1. as a fellow human
2. as someone whose company you enjoy
3. as a friend
4. as someone you want to see happy
5. as someone you want to see naked
6. as someone you only want to love you in return

For the sake of brevity, I kept this list short, but I did order the list in least to most creepy.  And when you map these simplified types of love to the context of the requester, things get a little tricky.  Please note that “yes” could mean “as a fellow human” as well as “I want to own you exclusively”.

And even that mapping doesn’t tell the whole story.  And part of that is because the list of love types is not exclusive.  Multiple types can be valid at once.  When you get into that, you have to start assigning points for goodness/badness/weirdness and sum them all together to determine if the end result is good, bad, or just weird.

And after all that analysis, maybe that’s the only types of love there are.  Good love, bad love, and weird love.  But, the asking of the simple question, “Do you love me,” can result in the exposure of which of those three types your relationship is then based.  Unless you lie.

Where does lying get you?  Let’s go back to a simple yes/no answer for this, because if your answer is, “In what way?” you’re immediately in the weird zone.  Unfortunately, the most logical response, “Why do you ask?” puts you in the bad zone.  The most rational response, “Yes, of course!” is also the most risky.  To which I repeat, there is no safe answer.  Ok, maybe answering a stranger, “No” might be valid, but who ever wants to heard they aren’t loved, especially when they asked the question?