How to say I love you (before it's too late)

I've been there. I've said "I love you" and the person pulled away, shocked: "Why did you say that? It's too soon - you don't know it yet!" What is it, that I "don't know yet"? How much information do I need to gather before I can follow my heart and say I love you? Just as with so many other things in our lives - when we are about to say "I love you" - we take our past and put it into our future! We quickly go back over our entire emotional history and think about everything that happened the last times we said "I love you", and we expect the same things to happen this time again. We subconsciously pre-load our spontaneous feelings and when we finally decide to express them they come out somewhat like this: I love you because I usually get a great boost to my self-esteem from your positive reaction and we have a lovely time together until things start to cool off and it gets really awkward for a while and we call it quits and that hurts - and I better shouldn't have said I love you in the first place. I love you but then you might want to get married and all of a sudden my money goes out the door for all kinds of clothing and furniture which we don't need if we don't move in together leave alone having kids and I work my butt off and have no more fun...let me just say - I really like you! I love you but what if I'm not good enough for you and when we get closer you'll find out about all my bad habits and weaknesses and I'm sure your mother will have something to say about me that will influence you negatively towards me and I couldn't possibly survive a rejection of my feelings - why can't we just be friends for a while? Funny, isn't it? Notice how the "I love you's" are closely followed by "I" or "me" references?

Could it be that "I love you" means...

I am now committed to your well-being regardless of my thoughts or feelings?

I'm taking a closer look at this topic on my lens "How to say I love you".