Just watched one of the best scenes from Battlestar Galactica (Season 4, Episode 16). It’s from one of the last episodes so it is far too long and scandalous to describe what is going on. I’ll just point out the two lines that make the scene for me because I relate to them.

What you need to know is that these lines come from a Colonel Saul Tigh, the tough guy of the show who makes most tough guys look like pansies with his growl of a voice and his no-nonsense countenance, made all-the-more intimidating by the eye patch he earned from captivity as a resistance fighter. The mother of his unborn child is on a hospital bed with pregnancy complications worsening. He is told that he needs to tell her that he loves her. He resists saying it, like you would expect such a grizzly character to do, but not for the reason you’d expect. It is not a lack of feeling nor a pride issue. It is the nature of how men feel and relate their feelings.

“She knows it! I don’t need to say it. I shouldn’t need to say it to anyone. Isn’t it enough that I feel it?”

With men, feelings are expressed on a need-to-know basis. I will tell you how I feel about you only when I don’t think it is clear to you or something has changed recently or there is something challenging that loyalty. More than that is superfluous to me.

Women like to express feelings and have them expressed to them all the time - several times a day - several times per conversation. Exaggerations aside, it is a significant contrast of approach.

Also, this line also points out the fact that for men, it is an accomplishment just to feel love or any extreme non-selfish emotion. Expressing it is another hurdle, one that is not often needed as described above.

“I feel it less with words.”

This is exactly why I almost never say “I love you.” The act of condensing these feelings to oft-repeated words that do not adequately express leaves me with a sense of dishonoring something sacred. It’s something like when I play drums with a band much better than me (100% of the time). Even though the song is played and everyone sings along, I know that I have limited it from what it was originally intended to be and what it could possibly be. It is better for me to not say anything and hope that my actions speak for themselves.

When I do express sentiments, I mean them. When I don’t express something, it’s not because I don’t feel it. Rather it is the opposite - I feel it too much to reduce it to mere expression.

Ches