The Language of Love

A young lady of my acquaintance asked a young chap, 'Are we seeing each other?' He frowned, glanced at a mirror and observed that his eyesight was fine. Was hers?

The terror of, and yearning for, labels have skewed the lover's lexicon. Euphemism and exaggeration have stolen from it all semblance of logic. All the following sentences are comprehensible, if utterly illogical:

We've been going out for so long that we always stay in.


My lover isn't in love with me. It's purely sexual.


My mistress does as she's told.


We've been on a few dates, but we're not dating.


I don't get on with my sixty-four-year-old girlfriend.


I'm not getting any sleep since we started sleeping together.

And thus do meanings split and fracture. The phrase divorces the verb. The verb cheats on the noun.

The Inky Fool playing it cool