Dear Jono,
I'm a freshman in High School, and I've recently begun my first foray into dating. It's been going ok so far, but I've been really confused by my last boyfriend and my current crush's use of the words "baby" and "I love you."
I've never been called "baby" by anyone before. Whenever either of them have called me that, my inner feminist has wanted to sock him in the stomach and tell him to stop comparing me to an infant, goshdarnit! Is this a normal thing that guys call their girlfriends? And how do I tell my crush nicely that gut-punching will ensue if he continues to call me that?
As for "I love you." When I've thought about saying that to someone, I've always thought of it as a sweet, truthful moment where both of us sincerely like each other. But it just seems sleazy to me when a guy says that after two days of dating. Which is what happened to me. From a guy's perspective, what does saying "I love you" signify?
This question is sort of two separate questions, both of which happen to involve the fact that when a high school guy opens his mouth, anything at all is liable to come out of it, like words, or french fries. So I'm going to take this one step at a time.
"Baby"
You've basically given me a true-or-false question here ("Calling you 'baby' is normal, T/F"). Well, the answer is trulse. The question you should have asked was "Is this stupid, and possibly kind of gross?" to which I would answer "yes, but unintentionally so." Yeah, guys in your life are probably going to call you "baby" sometimes; no, they don't mean that you are a fat and bald infant, any more than their use of "honey" would imply that you are a pile of goo that came out of a bee. Often "baby" is just the only pet name a guy is aware of, since it's so ubiquitous (if you say it three times while humming, you have just recorded a hit song). And anyway, if your crush is calling you something other than "hey you there, hiding in my bushes," you're doing pretty well for yourself.
You don't have to live with it, of course. If a teenage guy whom you're dating is doing something that bothers you, chances are he doesn't realize that it bothers you. No, wait: if any teenage guy is doing anything that bothers you, he probably doesn't realize it. No no wait. Zero males alive have any idea which part of you is the head and which part is the feet. If you approach every relationship with that truth in mind, you will be a lot happier.
So the simple approach to addressing this is probably best. If you want him to stop calling you "baby," you're going to have to say something along the lines of "Hey, could you stop calling me baby?" I realize this answer is very boring, and will lead to almost no wacky hijinks at all, but we have potentially bigger problems to get to here.
"I Love You"
There's a study floating around that says guys tend to say "I love you" sooner than girls do, but that they may only be saying it to, you know, make your acquaintance, horizontally. It was a small and possibly crazy study, so I'm not presenting it as absolute fact, but it's out there. I bring it up because in this study—in which guys professing love first had sleazy intentions—the average guy waited 97 days first. Mathematically, this makes your beau as horny as 48.5 ordinary men put together, and you should probably call a scientist or the Army or something.
However.
We're talking about high school guys, who—and I cannot stress this enough—do not know what you want. When I was a high school guy, speaking to girls was just a new way to discover the baffling, senseless words my brain would put in my mouth when it was under pressure. A hot girl would say "Hi," and I would say "Yes! Also, to you, and. Ninja turtles," and then my brain would simply stop and I would stand there in absolute silence for five minutes. So I'm not going to tell you that "baby" plus "I love you" necessarily equals "sleazemonster." It would if you were both 25, but for now I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I do think it means one of these two things:
- He means well, and likes you, but is bad at this and kind of overenthusiastic, or
- He is a pawing disaster.
You're going to have to figure this out yourself from context. If he's a legitimately good person, genuinely thoughtful, and even shows interest in Girl Things (talking, emotions, ponies), then he is probably an okay guy who is simply being derpy. If he buys you edible underwear for Christmas and hits on your sister, then I think you already have your answer.
How long do you think is appropriate to wait until you said "I love you"?
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