I love you 5

(June 2012)

Girls are needy we need to be appreciated and we need to be told that we are appreciated and especially loved.  Some men are under the misconception that you don't need to tell your loved ones that you love them because they already know and it would be redundant if you kept telling them.  This is not true even though we may know that you love us we like to be told again and again not because we don't know (most of the time) but because it's just nice to hear and it's reassuring.  Michael was good at this he was always telling me how much he loved me and other such niceties and I ate it up. I loved it, who doesn't like to be told they are loved by the person they love. 

The problem is that ever sense his accident Michael can't talk to me and although I know he loves me very much I am a needy girl and I want to hear him say that he loves me.  At first I just accepted it Michael couldn't tell me but I knew and that was good enough.  But as time went on this was not good enough I wanted more.  So once Michael started to acknowledge the world around him I started exploiting his abilities to tell me he loves me.  At first is was squeeze my hand if you love me then we moved on to blink your eyes if you love me.  This started early on when often he couldn't or wouldn't respond at all but every time I asked him if he loved me he would acknowledge that he did.  After some time we graduated to thumbs up if you love me and being a girl every time he confirmed he loved me my heart would do a little dance (see girls aren't so complicated after all).

Knowing that Michael loves me is great and the fact that he can confirm his love is even better but as I mentioned earlier girls are needy so as Michael has improved my need for more information about his love has increased.  I now have him show me how much he loves me so he will squeeze my hand but now the harder he squeezes the more he loves me. I love all the ways he tells me he loves me but my favorite is when he quantifies his love with a number.  Michael only has the use of his left hand so the highest amount of love has to be capped at five.  I ask him on a scale from 1 to 5 how much does he love me (5 being the absolute highest) some may think this is manipulative but I say whatever works works. He will raise his hand and try to show five which is difficult because although he has the use of his hand, his fingers can't straighten all the way and  It is hard for him. Seeing him do something so hard just to let me know how much  he loves me makes me realize that 5 is the best number to be loved.

I think that we all need to not only show people we love them but also tell them even if all you can do is show 5.