what to say to a friend you love
five sentences, free, on one page.

what you’ll work through

1. say it plain, and say the kind. i love you, and i mean it as a friend. the second half is doing the work. without it the sentence is ambiguous and the other person spends the next hour deciding what you meant, which is the whole reason nobody says it.
2. let it be weird for four seconds. the silence after is the hard part and it is short. four seconds, and the reflex is to rescue it with a joke, which takes the sentence back. do not take it back. wait.
3. if the big one will not come out, say the small one. this year would have been worse without you. i think about that thing you said. i would have been fine either way, and i am glad it was you. a small true sentence beats a big one you never say.
4. say it to the one it is hardest to say to. in a 2021 survey of 2,019 americans, 49 per cent of women and 25 per cent of men said they had told a friend they loved them in the past week. if the person you thought of first is a man, that gap is the reason it feels like a big deal, and it is also the reason it is worth doing.
5. then talk about it like people who can name things. the sentence is the opening, not the conversation. what kind of love, what they are to you, what you want the friendship to be in ten years. none of that is embarrassing once the first sentence is out.