Chapter 3: “I Love You” and “I Like You”

Chapter 3: “I Love You” and “I Like You”

Calvin: Two Four Letter Words

I was seventeen. I was a senior in high school. And I was smitten.

The more time we spent together, the more serious I became. Patience enjoyed me, trusted me, and increasingly depended on my friendship, but I was more certain about us sooner. I did not view dating as a casual sport. Somewhere inside me, even as a teenager, I was looking for my future wife; that is a lot to put on a young relationship.

Patience, thankfully, did not realize too early just how serious I was. She liked the idea of having a boy who could be a true friend, but the idea of marriage was not yet pressing on her the way it was pressing on me. I was pursuing. Patience was going along for the ride.

And then came the words.

One night, after about six months of dating, we were lingering in the car in Patience’s parents’ driveway. By then, long goodbyes had become a familiar part of our rhythm—last words that seem to have no natural ending. You say goodbye, and then you talk a little more. You say you should go, and then you don’t. You look at the window to see if someone is waiting up for you; nobody is, so you linger.

That night I looked deep into her eyes and said, “I love you.”

I meant it—at least I meant what I understood those words to say at the time. I felt strong affection for her. I loved being with her. When I wasn’t with her, I thought about her constantly. I wanted the relationship to keep growing, and I wanted her in my future. So I said what felt obvious.

“I love you.”

And Patience, being caught quite off guard, paused dramatically and then said, “I like you.”

That was not exactly the response I was hoping for.

It may have been our first real relationship tension; I had offered a word that felt big and important to me, and Patience had not returned it. She had not exactly rejected me, but she had not affirmed me either. She liked me—that was true. But she was not ready to say love.

I thought I was being clear. Patience thought she was being honest. Both, it turns out, were true.

My meaning of love was built around attraction, affection, desire, and the fact that I could hardly stop thinking about her. Patience’s meaning was weightier.

Patience: How Do You Know?

One night in the driveway Calvin looked at me and said, “I love you.” Of course, he was hoping I’d respond in kind; I didn’t. I couldn’t. I thought we were still enjoying the safe shallow end of the swimming pool when he suddenly went and jumped in the deep end, hoping I would follow. I eventually stammered back “I like you.” It’s pretty hard to stuff toothpaste back into the tube, so he held his ground from then on and kept saying it at the end of our dates. I cautiously advanced from “I like you” to “I really like you” and then kept inserting more “reallys” to demonstrate growth while conspicuously avoiding the word “love.”

Eventually the awkward difference had to be faced head on in conversation, as we tried to understand what each other meant by those words. Turns out he meant he felt very attracted to me, and thought about me a lot when we were apart, and hoped the relationship would keep growing closer and stronger.

My interpretation was harder for me to find words for, mostly because I was wrestling silently inside with the age-old question “How do you know when you’re in love?” I was not about to actually ask another human being such a personal question, but when I turned to my trusted sources—books and movies—they seemed to agree that emotions and feelings were the way to tell.

Alert readers may recall how I described my earlier struggle starting at age 11 of “How do I know I’m really a born-again Christian?” Back then I simply didn’t feel the feelings that you were supposed to feel when you “got saved,” and now I didn’t seem to feel the feelings you were supposed to feel when you were “in love.” Therefore, I logically assumed I was not in love, just in “like.”

On one occasion, the internal pressure to not disappoint him got the best of me, and I blurted out, “I love you too.” He was thrilled—but then my conscience got the better of me and I took it back a few weeks later, resuming “really really” liking him.

These words represented our first serious relationship challenge. We spent a lot of time talking about it, and I puzzled over it in my mind for months. I finally decided I was reserving the word “love” for the person I thought I would marry someday, and the high school me was not ready to marry anyone anytime soon.

Calvin: Honesty Can Be Painful

I probably should have been grateful for progress, but when you are the one waiting to hear “I love you,” every extra “really” can feel both encouraging and slightly ridiculous. How many “reallys” equal love? Is there a conversion chart somewhere? Three? Five? At some point does the word “love” automatically unlock, like a prize at the end of a video game?

Patience held her ground. She was not exactly stubborn, but she was not easily pushed. Her caution needed more time to figure out what she knew.

And I had to wait.

We did not handle all of this perfectly. I brought it up in conversation from time to time because I wanted reassurance. Patience felt the pressure of not disappointing me. At one point she even said, “I love you,” and I was thrilled, until she reconsidered and took it back. That was painful, and it was also honest.

Patience later explained that reconsidering was not an emotional reversal; it was more like an internal correction. She had tried the word on and then realized it did not yet fit the way she believed it should. I had finally heard what I wanted to hear, and then she had to tell me she had spoken too soon. She did not enjoy that—nobody enjoys walking backward past a milestone the other person treasured.

A less safe relationship might have punished her honesty. I could have sulked, withdrawn, accused her of playing games, or tried to make her feel guilty until she gave me the words I wanted. Conversely, Patience could have hidden behind vague answers or pretended to be certain just to keep me happy. Instead, awkward as it was, we kept talking.

We were having the same conversation, but we were not using the same dictionary.

What is Love, Really?

Every human being has a deep need to be truly loved and known by another human. Western culture, especially the modern American version, tells us that romantic love is the ultimate solution to meet this need. Romance novels, chick flicks, and love songs all teach us that love is a feeling—a wonderful, thrilling, passionate, utopian feeling—and when we have that feeling, we are in love.

There are at least two problems with this premise. The first is the logical opposite: if the feeling means we are in love, then when the feeling disappears, we conclude that we are no longer in love. That logic has been the basis for a great deal of distress and no small number of divorces. The second problem with the premise is that in the history of the world, more marriages were selected and arranged by parents and matchmakers than were chosen by lovers, and yet over time many of those marriages were and even today are characterized by some form of love.

The counter-cultural argument says that love is more than a feeling; it is also a choice. That doesn’t disparage the lovely feelings, but it gives us something much more solid than only feelings on which to build a life, a relationship, and a marriage. If love is a choice, and marriage is a commitment, your foundation can hold you steady while feelings come and go in cycles. A man named Paul, in a letter to a young church in Corinth two thousand years ago, described love this way: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7)

Love is a living thing; it does not appear suddenly within us, fully grown and mature. It starts small, but given the relational equivalent of water and sunlight, it can grow into an invincible force for good in the world. It can carry a marriage through incredibly hard times and into seasons of true joy.

Patience: He Followed Me to College

I don’t think I realized how much I valued Calvin in my world until we started to talk about life after high school. I remember thinking that college was a major life decision; my parents had subtly ingrained into my mentality that college was just the logical next step. At the same time, growing up in rural North Dakota meant that a college in a “big city” like Fargo was about as far away as anyone ever went. It did not even occur to me to consider schools outside of the state, although my grades and SAT/ACT scores would have gotten me into many of them.

With the mindset of pleasing my parents, I gave picking the right college such serious weight that I felt it should not be influenced by where any of my friends went, including Calvin. I made him agree that we would not share our choices with each other until they were final. He solemnly agreed, and then watched me carefully to figure out where I was going before he announced he was going there too. Call me naïve, but I don’t think I really grasped at the time that the only reason he was going to college at all was to stay close to me and fend off any competitors for my attention.

Because we landed at the same college, our dating life continued on there without interruption, cementing him even more firmly as my best friend and boyfriend. We joined the same Christian campus group, joined the weekend traveling singing group tied to it, and attended the same local church every Sunday. We literally saw each other for at least a few minutes almost every single day.

Time kept marching on, and with a full year of college life behind us, we were still best friends. And romantically attracted to each other. I still didn’t feel the Hollywood feelings, but I simply couldn't picture my future life without my best friend anymore. That decided it for me; that qualified as “love,” and this time I didn’t take it back.

Love Learns Their Language

Not every couple has an obvious “I love you” and “I like you” story, but every couple lives with the reality that the same word may not mean the same thing to both of them. Perhaps the couples who actually come from two different native languages have a head start on this realization, because they recognize that their words sometimes require extra explanation to be understood. The rest of us assume our meaning is the only obvious one.

Courtship teaches something marriage must keep practicing: love has to make room for the other person’s meaning. It is not enough to always say, “That is not what I meant.” At some point love also learns to ask, “Then what did that mean to you?” Even mature love does not complacently assume, “You should know me by now.” Love keeps making room for the fact that after years together, there is still more to know.

Looking back now, we can smile at our struggles because we learned from them. A relationship grows stronger when honesty is not treated as betrayal, and it also grows stronger when longing is not mocked. Calvin’s desire to hear “I love you” was real, and Patience’s hesitation was honest. His longing needed kindness. Her caution needed respect. Both remain true in our marriage today.

Calvin: A Test of Character

When she said, “I love you” this time, I understood immediately that it was more than a romantic milestone. This was a cue. Her interpretation of love had finally caught up to mine, so I did what I had been waiting to do: I asked her to marry me.

There was a pause.

I remember the pause, because when you ask a woman to marry you, any pause longer than half a second feels like a North Dakota winter: endless. I had waited through “I like you,” “I really like you,” and “I really, really like you.” I had endured the uncertain mathematics of her emotional vocabulary for months, and now I had finally asked the question, and she paused.

Then she said “Yes,” but, being Patience, she did not leave it there.

“Yes,” she said, “but you have to ask my dad.”

That was not a small detail.

Patience’s mother already approved of me. She knew I came from a serious church family and was not likely to haul her daughter off to wild parties. That helped. But her father Ralph was more cautious. Patience was his only child, his little girl, and he was not eager to hand her future to just anybody, especially not a farm boy with a mischievous streak and a demonstrated willingness to drive too fast.

Patience loved and respected her father; I knew that. I also knew Ralph was not exactly president of the Calvin Sayler Fan Club. In hindsight I think his caution meant he was still evaluating my character. Ralph was a rancher. I was a farm boy. City folks may not understand why that distinction matters, but in that world it did. Patience later joked that the musical Oklahoma! had a whole song about how “the farmer and the cowman should be friends,” which of course implies that they were not.

If you’ve ever watched a classic Western movie, or even one of the old TV shows like Bonanza or The Virginian, you know that the good guys, the rancher/cowboys, always have strong character. They might be rough around the edges, drinking a little too much or even settling an argument with their fists, but they had an internal moral code that valued respect and integrity and honesty. They were gentlemen knights with dusty boots instead of shining armor and they treated ladies like ladies. There is a philosophy called the “Cowboy Way” that boils it down to this: “If it's not true, don't say it. If it's not yours, don't take it. If it's not right, don't do it.”

This is not just a Hollywood sentiment; this is a genuine code of honor among ranchers and it was Ralph’s standard for any man, so he would expect nothing less from a future son-in-law. He did not know me personally at first, so he made some judgments based on what he knew about my family—in a rural area, there are no total strangers. Ralph knew of my grandfather from the wrong side of a land deal that went sideways, and he knew of my father from the neglected condition of the equipment Clarence used to bring a sick cow to the veterinary clinic, where he worked in his early retirement years. These facts did not work to my advantage, but to his credit, Ralph still gave me a chance to prove myself. 

Somewhere along the way, I had been invited to a branding in Patience’s family’s ranching world. A branding is a spring event where calves are sorted from cows, vaccinated, castrated, and branded, and I understood that this was not merely a social invitation: this was a test. Ralph gave me a horse to ride, and the rest was up to me.

I felt reasonably confident I could wrestle calves—physically hold them down while the necessary work is done—but I also knew I was being watched. Could I handle myself around horses? Could I get along with the cowboys? Could I show enough grit and humility to belong in this world, or at least not embarrass myself beyond repair?

Apparently, I passed. I am still here. But being accepted by her father, I instinctively knew, was also part of how Patience was evaluating me. And now she had given me another test.

Not a Side Issue

Character matters within covenant because marriage is built on promises, and promises are only as strong as the people who make them. When a man and woman stand before God and witnesses and speak vows to one another, they are doing something weighty. They are entrusting their future to the kind of people they are and, more importantly, to the kind of people they are willing to keep becoming.

This is the crux of why character is not a side issue in marriage. When you marry someone, you are not simply choosing the person you love. You are choosing the person whose honesty you will depend on and whose restraint you will rely on. You are committing to live with someone whose humility will matter when they are wrong, whose faithfulness will carry real weight when feelings fluctuate, and whose integrity will either make the covenant safer or more fragile. Marriage places enormous trust in the moral and spiritual substance of another human being.

In his quiet way, Ralph was thinking about character before we ever did.

Calvin: The Harder Test

But asking Ralph for Patience’s hand was an even harder test. Wrestling calves is easier than sitting across from the father of the woman you love and asking for his blessing. Still, I knew this was what a man was supposed to do. Patience said yes, but she also made it clear that her father’s approval was required, and if I wanted to marry her, I needed to honor that.

It was not the kind of question you asked over the phone, so we had to wait for the right opportunity. Patience’s parents came to Grand Forks for a visit, and my pilot roommate, Ron, and I hatched a plan that gave me time alone with Ralph. After a visit to Ron’s family farm, including a ride in his father’s airplane, Ralph and I drove back toward Grand Forks together.

That short drive was my only chance. I pushed through my nerves and asked for Patience’s hand in marriage.

Ralph’s answer was pragmatic. “If I wasn’t OK with it, I would have told you long before this.”

Technically, that was a yes.

Patience: The Ring and the Call

The next day, Calvin surprised me with a little gold band holding a modest but sparkling diamond. I called home excitedly and told my mother, “I got the ring!” Dead silence. Crickets. My mom had no idea what I was talking about. Apparently, my dad had not gotten around to telling her about the historic conversation with Calvin the day before. My joyful phone call morphed into an awkward explanation instead.

I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I had waited a long time to say the word love. Calvin had waited a long time to ask the big question. My dad, apparently, was also willing to wait a little longer before telling my mom.

We always suspected that he assumed we would wait until after college to actually get married. In his mind, there may not have been any rush to tell my mother. But in our minds, the wedding was much closer than that, and it would not be the last time we got ahead of my parents’ expectations.

Reflections for Couples

Character, in the context of marriage, is the quality of your inward life authentically demonstrated in your outward behavior. But nobody arrives at the altar as a flawless person. Strong marriages are made of people who take growth seriously, who are willing to be confronted, willing to change, and willing to stay in the work of love instead of living in the protection of self.

Marriage keeps asking the same question in different ways: Will you let love mature you, or will you spend your life defending yourself from the very growth your covenant is inviting?

Can your spouse tell you the truth without being punished for it? Can they say, “I am not ready,” “I am afraid,” “I need time,” “That word means something different to me,” or “I want to say yes, but I am not there yet,” and still be met with patience?

Keep those questions in mind as you listen to each other share their story and their thoughts:

1. Retell the beginning together.

Set aside time to tell the story of your first conversations, first dates, and the moments when the relationship began to feel real. Notice what was already being formed.

2. Define your important words.

Choose words like love, respect, honesty, safety, or commitment and each explain what those words mean to you.

In Closing

If we have one hope for this chapter, it is to encourage couples to think about character not as a side issue, but as bedrock. To stop asking only, “Are we happy right now?” or even, “Are we getting along?” and begin asking the more searching and more fruitful question: “Who are we becoming?”

Because marriages that endure are sustained by two imperfect people who understand that staying is not simply about remaining in the same house, but about remaining in the conversation, in the negotiation, and in the covenant.

We were about to enter into that covenant. We thought we were ready.