1. “I don’t know if I have any kind of rule; I’ve been in year-long relationships where I never said. I’ve said it a month in, three months in. It’s just when I’m feeling it. Usually when I still have butterflies when I see her, and we’re both starting to talk about meeting each other’s parents. That’s usually when I can tell this is getting serious.” — Tom, 27
2. “I don’t say it before a month, no matter how much I like them. I feel like it scares them off.” — Luke, 28
3. “I said it after a week to the woman I wound up marrying. Looking back on past relationships, I was probably always quick to say ‘I love you,’ but I was crazy about my wife from the moment I met her.”— Ian, 26
4. “I never say it. Ever. I take it very seriously, and it’s not something I want to just say to anyone. I don’t throw that word around. I want to mean it when I tell my future wife I love her. I don’t think many people I know realise I take it this seriously, but I do. I don’t want to cheapen the phrase.” — Russell, 29
5. “Probably on average… and this is me doing my best to average it out just thinking back… but around six months or so? To be completely honest, that’s just when I feel obligated to say it.”— Anthony, 28
6. “I think I know if this is going to be a long-term relationship within a month or two, which is usually when I’m ready to say, ‘I love you.’ But I wait until a good moment. I don’t just like, fire off a Snap the second it dawns on me. I want it to be romantic.” — Cody, 26
7. “I’ve said ‘I love you’ to two of my girlfriends and I married one of them. In both cases, it was probably closer to the one year mark, but definitely before our one year anniversary.” — Jay, 29
8. “I have a problem. I fall in love with like, everyone. There has been more than one occasion where I was [out] and my friends had to take my phone away because I was about to tell a girl I hooked up with like, once that I loved her.” — Ethan, 25
9. “It’s funny. I’ve said it to someone after a few weeks, and that relationship wound up being a train wreck. The woman I’m with now, she and I took it very slow. It was months and months before we said it. And things have been going so great. And that’s not to say falling in love fast is bad, just that falling in love slowly is perfectly fine.” — Joey, 26
10. “It was actually a bit of a… a point of contention with my current girlfriend. She said it fairly early on. She probably said ‘I love you’ at around three months. And it wasn’t that I didn’t care about her deeply at the time, but… I just didn’t feel comfortable saying it. It took me a while to get there. But it came up, and I felt pressured. I didn’t like the idea of saying it because she wanted me to. I eventually did say it, but on my terms.” — Brett, 28
11. “I think six months is kind of the epicentere of saying, ‘I love you.’ That’s a very reasonable time to say it. And I think the further away you get from six months in either direction, like either too early or too late, it starts to get a little odd.” — Steven, 27
12. “I want to say usually between like, five to nine months. I’ve had maybe eight serious relationships where saying ‘I love you’ was even on the table. And that window for me definitely wasn’t an exact science. Sometimes I felt like I was there more quickly than other times.” — Dennis, 29
H/T Cosmo US