LYLAF. The letters sat on my phone, defying me to understand what each letter meant.

I’m not new to texting, but even I was a bit baffled by the arrangement of letters. Liking Your Lazy Attention Friend? Like You’re Licking A Fuzzyburger? My mind grappled to find the right interpretation.

Not willing to simply ask my friend on the other end of the conversation for a definition, I do what I always do in these situations – Google it!

I’m not new to texting, but even I was a bit baffled by the arrangement of letters. Liking Your Lazy Attention Friend? Like You’re Licking a Fuzzyburger?

Turns out it means, “Love you like a friend.”

Oh, how…nice?

I wasn’t sure how to feel. It seemed like a backhanded compliment. It is as if my friend had texted me, “I love you…but not that much.”

Granted, in the English language, we only have one word for love. In other languages, there can be as many as ten different words describing love. A different word for loving a hamburger vs. loving your grandfather. It makes sense that people would feel the need to qualify what love they are feeling for others.

And, I admit, I used to think how limiting the English language is to only have one word that is used to describe all the types of love.

Now I think how wonderful! It is the great equalizer. We don’t say I love this more than that or this person less than this person. No, we just love it or him or her or them without any direct comparisons.

We don’t need additional qualifiers because, let’s be clear, there is such a thing as context! Love is defined by the object of the emotion. If you are talking about your husband or wife, that love is considered different than if you say, “I love french fries!”

If my friend had just texted, “Love you!” I would have understood what that meant based on the context – we’ve known each other for years, my friend is already married, we are not in an extramarital affair, etc. I can figure it out.

But having it spelled out for me, especially more than once, is a bit of a slap in the face (even when sent via text).

There is no reason to create love barrels to stick people in. Let’s just say love and leave the qualifications alone. People understand the difference. And if they don’t, you’ve got bigger problems than semantics.

TTYL