No More I Love Yous

This song has a special meaning for me. I was going through a bad divorce. I had left my wife for my mistress and once there realized I didn't really love her either. I swung between despair and desire, throwing anger or love at both the women in my life until the words 'I love you' became completely meaningless. I wasn't in love, I was living in fear and I let both of them go

It wasn't until I reached this point that I was available for love. It was something more substantial, something not reached for on a whim. Love had to begin with me. The first I love you had to me to me.

When I realized how foolish I had been, it set me free. Hence the laughter at the end of the track.

This song has a lot of personal meaning for me as well. I have a very dysfunctional family where I feel I have been manipulated a lot. I've been made to feel guilty in a lot of ways by my parents who use me and situations going on with me as tools they can use to fight with each other and argue about whether they should get divorced, and they never cared about how this affected me, I grew up feeling like I was to blame for everything wrong with my parents marriage and like I'm some kind of problem child . My parents are still together, don't ask me why, there's no love there between them. However, I have been reading a lot about codependency and I am learning to set boundaries with people in my family, of course they don't like that , because I'm standing up for myself and not letting them treat me however they want to anymore. And I have recently broken off a relationship I was in for 20 years, I have no more love left to give, all we do now is make each other miserable, and yes, I do feel disappointed with him. So no more I love yous to me means, I'm not going to tell anyone I love them unless they are showing through their actions or kindness towards me that they really care, I'm not going to say I love you as,some nice way to say goodbye or whatever, I'm only going to say it if I really mean it and I think the person deserves to be told that, not because I'm trying to keep the peace or trying to make someone feel better about me. I'm detaching from the toxic relationships, and only being around the ones that lift me up.

Or is it about a mother helping her child with monsters in the dark? Maybe that mother is herself.