Auntie SparkNotes: Of Old Ladies and Unspoken Love

It's rapid-fire response time! Today, before we get to the down-and-dirty giving of advice, I've got some quick and dirty answers to a few of your quips and queries from the comments.

From zella:

How do I deal with a Chihuahua's separation anxiety?

Sadly, Chihuahuas are not among my areas of expertise. Perhaps this?

From myusikah:

Dear Auntie Sparknotes: Do you REALLY read all of our pleas of help to you?

Um, yes. DO NOT DOUBT ME.

And from LunarCircus, who commented after I requested that you young whippersnappers avoid confusing me by using textspeak in your letters:

Really?! You're old? I always picture a brunette in her twenties with a devil-may-care ponytail and some classy red-rimmed glasses.

I am a 95-year-old, blue-haired spinster who lives in a retirement community in Florida and has 17 cats named after various prime ministers of England. (Okay, I'm kidding. I'm 27. Which still means that when I was in high school, cell phones looked like this. [ed note: we've had drinks with Auntie SparkNotes, and she's a babe!!])

And now, on to the dirty, filthy business of... love.

Dear Auntie,
I feel like I should just say this right away: I'm in love with my boyfriend. We've been dating for about 4 months now, but I was friends with him for a while before that. We are both each other's first really serious relationship. He always just makes me so happy and just gets me, so I'm very sure that I love him. Here is my problem, though; I don't know if I should tell him, or wait for him to say those three little words first.

This is driving me IN-SANE. I was always kind of the traditional helpless romantic: guy makes all the first moves, asks the girl out, and confesses his love first, but now I'm dying to just run up and tell him! I'm afraid that things will get weird if I tell him and he doesn't feel the same way, though. He always likes to take things a little slower (it took him over 6 months to ask me out officially, Auntie!), so I don't know if he just doesn't love me yet or if he hasn't found his "perfect moment" to tell me. Should I tell him? Should I wait for him to tell me? Please help!

"Helpless romantic," eh? Heh. Heheheh. That right there, Sparklers, is what we like to call a Freudian Slip—the actual term is "hopeless romantic," but "helpless" is a much better description of how you'll end up when you put the other person in total charge of driving the relationship forward. It's okay if you're not naturally aggressive, and it's fine to like being pursued, but you should avoid making hard-and-fast rules in your own mind about who should say what first; it's a silly construct, and sitting on your hands can get reeeeally uncomfortable after a while.

So, while you remove your hands from beneath your butt (doesn't that feel better?), I'll draw up a list of ways to figure out whether you should confess your love.

If you're saying "I love you" in order to find out whether he feels the same, don't say it.
If your feelings about confessing hinge on his response, don't say it.
If you'll be devastated if he doesn't say "I love you" back, don't say it.
If, on the other hand, you just love this guy, and you feel you'll go crazy if you keep it bottled up, and you don't give a flying fig whether or not he's ready to drop the L-word because this is about your feelings and nothing more?

It's a go. Unleash that love-bomb, lady!

The one caveat is this: You might be able to move past an unrequited "I love you" without skipping a beat, but the same may not be true for your boyfriend. You know him well, so ask yourself honestly before you confess: if he isn't ready to say it yet, is this going to freak him out? You can mitigate the possibility of awkwardness (by adding something like, "This isn't a test or anything, and it's not a big deal if you're not there yet—I just wanted to tell you"), but if you think he'll still get weird about it, you're better off waiting until he won't. Not because it's the guy's prerogative to make all the big moves, but because considering your SO's feelings in addition to your own is part of being in love.

Let us know how it goes!

Got something to confess? Head to the comments! And as always, email your advice-seeking questions to Auntie at advice@sparknotes.com.