The women who flocked to India to bag a husband

The women who flocked to India to bag a husband - From the 1600s until the Second World War, 'surplus women’ flocked to India in a bid to bag a husband. In her new book, Anne de Courcy explains why

Right through the era of “the Fishing Fleet” – the name given to the girls and women who went out to India to look for husbands from the 17th century on — engagements were often a brisk affair. After a mere half dozen meetings with her future husband, Violet Swinhoe wrote in her diary (in 1916): “James had final talk with Daddy and then we were engaged. Too queer for words. I lay down.”

The history of the Fishing Fleet dates from the days of the East India Company, that vast trading organisation with its own army that wound up virtually ruling India. In its early days, when journeys by sail could take up to six months, many Company officers only came home once, if at all, during their service.

Some formed liaisons or marriages with Indian girls. For others, the Company developed the practice of sending out batches of prospective brides, whom they maintained in India for a year, during which time they were supposed to find a mate. They were known as the Fishing Fleet; if after the year they had proved too plain or too unpleasant for even the most desperate Company man, they were shipped home as “Returned Empties”.

But most were snapped up on arrival, after courtships that lasted from a month or so to – sometimes – a mere few days. “You must not be surprised when I tell you I am going to be married on the 13th of next month to Miss Charlotte Britten,” wrote Lieutenant Stuart Corbett to his father in February 1822. Corbett was a mere 19 years old but he had managed to land one of the 1821 Fishing Fleet within a month or two of their arrival in Calcutta.

His bride, Charlotte Batten, aged 20, was one of eight sisters: their father, in rural Kent, must have despaired of marrying them all off. His solution was to send two of them out to stay with their brother in India’s happy hunting ground.

When I began to research my book The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj, I soon realised that this annual migration of young women was a vast phenomenon, not only a story hitherto untold but also a gripping aspect of our history that opened a window on the wider sphere of Empire.

In the early days, the first hurdle was the five-month journey out to India, negotiating anything from pirates to the perilous, stormy seas of the Cape of Good Hope. “The eggs all went bad and had to be thrown overboard weeks ago and though there is dessert on the table every day I cannot touch a thing, as biscuits, figs and ratafia are alive,” wrote Minnie Blane, travelling in the late 1850s.

The first shock was the arrival port, seething with humanity — saris of bright pink, scarlet and emerald green vivid against brown skins, sellers of fruit, curry and sweetmeats shouting their wares — and a heat so searing it was like opening an oven door. (One of the stranger habits of the Raj was the medical insistence on wearing flannel next to the skin even in 40-degree heat; only at the beginning of the Twenties were corsets dropped in favour of cotton underwear.)

Social life depended on the climate, often near-perfect in the cold weather but hell in the heat. Then – for those who could not go up to the hills — shoes had to be shaken in case a scorpion had curled up inside, insects gathered so thickly that every wine glass had to have a cover, fatal diseases could kill overnight, clothes would rot, termites could destroy a house’s foundations and prickly heat made life a misery.

But none of this deterred the Fishing Fleet girls — or the parents who sent them out. Some, especially in the early days, were adventuresses, women who had tried without success to find a husband in England who could support them in the way of life they wanted. Later, some were schoolgirls returning to families who lived and worked in India, yet others were despatched by parents to stay with brothers or friends with the words, spoken or unspoken, “Find yourself a husband!” ringing in their ears. Marriage, after all, was the goal of just about every woman before the Second World War.

Most were very young, and sexually both inexperienced and ignorant – like Magda Hall, aged 23. As she sat in her bedroom on her wedding day, waiting for her wedding dress to be brought, her brother-in-law, to whom she was devoted, rushed into her room. “Whatever Ralph may do tonight,” he said, “remember – it’s all right!” And that, she said later, “was all the preparation I had for married life. At the time, I wondered what on earth he could mean.”

The new arrival plunged into a whirl of gaiety – polo matches, race meetings, moonlight picnics, dances, cocktail parties and dawn rides as the blue smoke from a distant village rose against the sky.

Then there were the men. Fit from days in the open air and the sport that formed so large a part of Raj life, handsome in their uniforms, and eagerly attentive, they were enough to turn the head of any susceptible young woman.

Once married, the realities of Raj life hit home. The Fishing Fleet bride found her life subordinated to that of her husband, as his was to the Raj, a patriarchal hierarchy shot through with a rigid protocol.

Calling cards were de rigueur and there was even a document entitled the Warrant of Precedence that showed the exact status of everyone in British employ so that seating at official dinners, for instance, could be arranged according to seniority. Wives took their husband’s rank, so that senior ladies had their “own” sofa at the Club and first use of the loos after dinner.

What drove the Fishing Fleet girls in their thousands to this alien land? The answer was the inexorable, increasing pressure to marry. It is difficult for us today to realise that for most of the 19th century, a girl without fortune or great beauty became a non-person if she did not marry.

When the taking-over of India by the British government was declared in 1858, single women continued to come out. Ten years later came the opening of the Suez Canal – and a sudden shift in demographics. The trickle became a flood.

Between 1851 and 1861 the number of unmarried women in Britain almost doubled (for the next 60 years, roughly one in three women between the ages of 25 and 35 was unmarried); and most of these were in what were called “the servant-keeping classes”.

Articles were written in newspapers and societies founded to deal with the problem of “surplus women”, as they were known. For the bold, the solution was to go where the men were: the Empire, especially India.

For here marriageable men outnumbered women by roughly four to one and were avid for wives. In India a girl who was too plain or too poor to find a husband in Britain would be showered with proposals; and she and her husband would live life at a much higher standard than either could at home, with a retinue of servants, spacious bungalows and all the sport you could wish.

For many, India cast a spell that nothing broke. As one of them, Veronica Bamfield, put it: “I was one of the lucky few on whom India lays a dark, jewelled hand, the warmth of whose touch never grows cold to those who have felt it.” ( telegraph.co.uk )

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Living with the in-laws: are you a LOSER?

Living with the in-laws: are you a LOSER? He never imagined it would happen to him, but Ed West and his family have joined the ranks of the LOSERs – London Overpriced, Scrounging off Elder Relatives

It’s a sobering statistic: the number of adults living with their parents has risen by 20 per cent in 15 years and – with the crash accelerating the trend towards “boomerang kids” – many older people are bracing themselves for the return of their adult children.

But what about those returning with children of their own? This, too, is on the increase. It’s also the basis for a new Sky One sitcom called Parents, starring Tom Conti, whose daughter (played by Sally Phillips) moves in with her two children after she loses her job. Billed as a “credit crunch comedy”, the programme reflects a rapidly growing trend.

 

Playing house: Ed and Emma West with their children Kitty (3-and-a-half) and Eleanor (2) and Emma's parents Valerie and Trevor Grove

In Parents, the couple’s plight is a source of shame. But is there anything wrong with raising children with the grandparents? Thousands of British Asians have been doing it for decades. And now, so do I, aged 34, with my wife, Emma, and family; we have lived with my wife’s parents for more than a year, bringing up our two children in an extended family. There are huge advantages.

Emma, 32, grew up in Crouch End, north London, which is now one of those medialand areas people talk about when they want to caricature the “liberal elite”, but was in her youth unfashionable. Her parents, Trevor and Valerie, bought their large Edwardian house in the early Eighties and raised four children there, and had expected eventually to downsize after their offspring left home (or so they hoped).

We were already living nearby, and part of that cliché – me in journalism and Emma in publishing – when Emma fell pregnant, first with Kitty (now three years old) and then, 17 months later, with Elfie (Eleanor Sophie). We were helped financially by her parents and mine. I’ve always wanted to be at the forefront of a new social demographic acronym, such as DINKY (double income no kids yet) or GLAM (greying, leisured, affluent, married). But I fear our acronym would be LOSERs: London Overpriced, Scrounging off Elder Relatives. We would have struggled to afford the most modest property in the borough, were it not for the Bank of Mum and Dad – the last well-respected bank in Britain.

But we took this to its logical conclusion when work began on extending the flat we were in, making it uninhabitable for at least a few months. In fact it’s been well over 12 months.

There have been difficult times. A family is a microculture, and integrating can be a shock. The laundry in particular has been the source of most conflict, the amount of washing a modern nuclear family has to undertake is unfathomable to my mother-in-law, and the washing machine being the Jerusalem of our shared house, the fault line over which all sides lose their tempers.

My father-in-law was the original New Man, one of the first Englishmen to cook, dance and spend time with his children. (He’s peculiar that way – he doesn’t even like football. If this were a war I’d suspect him of being a spy.) But since both Trevor and Emma are magnificent chefs, the rivalry in the kitchen can be intense.

And there is only one shower. I don’t think anyone, after spending 40 years working and looking forward to retirement and tennis, wants some weird man (me) hanging around their bathroom. That’s got to be a violation of some human right. But my in-laws are tolerant people, even if in the early days the passive-aggressive notes did escalate from one to two exclamation marks.

This is especially remarkable when one considers that Valerie is also caring most of the time for her 91-year-old mother, who is in independent living quarters and may have to be moved in, making her one of that rare demographic, the supersize sandwich generation.

But back to the benefits, and not just financial ones. Raising children is hard, and after the second one the pressure becomes intense; it feels like the scene in Das Boot when the submarine plunges so deep that the rivets began popping out. “It takes a village to raise a child,” is a corny phrase, but it is true.

Until recently, among working-class Britons at least, it was common for a married couple to spend time with one or other of their parents, until a property could be found in the neighbourhood. The British staple of the mother-in-law joke still reflects the tension this caused.

And in the broader scheme of things, nuclear families are unusual. Their development in medieval north-west Europe had huge effects on society. The system emerged in Britain, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, societies that also produced the jury system, capitalism and liberal democracy. Weaker ties within families meant fewer boundaries between them: less energy dissipated by warring clans meant more stable societies.

Some anthropologists argue that this influenced Anglo-Saxon liberalism and gave us a love of independence, the pinnacle being home ownership (which is, by grim extension, partly how we got into this house-price credit-crunch mess. But that’s another story).

The nuclear family is not ideal and not, in any longer evolutionary sense, “natural”. Across Europe and Asia people still live in extended families and for many British Asians this allows the parents to work or socialise while the grandparents do some of the child-rearing. The psychological benefits to children are well established.

Our children love it. After rising at 6am, sometimes 5.30am, and bounding into our bed, the children run downstairs to see Baggy and Pappy, as they call their grandparents. (I’m not sure about the etymology of the former, although it was originally “granny-bags”.) The early morning kitchen is often chaotic, with Humphrys and Naughtie competing for attention with shouting adults and children.

When Emma takes Kitty swimming Trevor will usually look after Elfie, and the in-laws will do the occasional bedtime, as well as spending afternoons doing puzzles or taking the children shopping.

We are also in direct contact with an older pool of wisdom, and teaching methods, although the human mind does erase a lot of the memory of child rearing, probably because otherwise no one would do it again. Our children have a fairly large circle of adults whom they see as direct family, too, including Emma’s sister Victoria, my mother, who stays once a week, and the American lodger, Sarah, who often cares for the children. And not forgetting the in-laws’ sweet, protective and rather dim dalmatian Jasper, and their sinister Egyptian cat Bosie – which, I suspect rather like my in-laws, treat our extended stay with a degree of suspicion.

All being well, we’ll be moving back in the autumn. We’ll have a kitchen and shower to ourselves and the in-laws will finally have an empty nest. But the children will miss out – on a garden, a large house, a dog and cat, but most of all their grandparents. Or, as we call them, the free mildminders. ( telegraph.co.uk )

READ MORE - Living with the in-laws: are you a LOSER?

The Danger of Yelling at Your Kids and Ways to Be a Calmer Mom

The Danger of Yelling at Your Kids and Ways to Be a Calmer Mom - If you've found yourself shrieking at your child - and regretting it - this advice is for you.

My husband, our two kids, and I were enjoying an idyllic trip to Hawaii, driving up the winding (and dangerous) Road to Hana and taking in the beauty of the cliffs and coastline. And then it happened. For no apparent reason, my son, then age 5, threw a water bottle from the backseat toward my husband, and it hit the windshield with a ferocious bang. By some miracle, we didn't crash, but we did lose control...big-time. Both my husband and I were ranting, raving, screaming, threatening: "Why would you do that? Don't you know we could have been killed? Here we are taking you on the vacation of a lifetime, and you throw a water bottle for no reason?" And on and on we went, spewing way more venom than our preschooler could ever deserve or even comprehend, for that matter.

Tears began rolling down our son's cheeks, and his lip quivered as he fought back sobs. After what I'm sure seemed like an eternity to him, we calmed down and continued on our way, and I tried to bury the incident in the back of my mind.

I had almost forgotten all about it when, a few weeks later, I replayed our Hawaii-trip video. There I was, recording a waterfall out the window of the car. I tucked the camera into its bag - accidentally leaving it still recording - and then the "water bottle incident" occurred. Though the screen was black, I heard my husband and myself screaming at our son, badgering him, shaming him.

Then it was my turn to fight back tears. How could I have freaked out like that in front of my kids, at my kid? The rant sounded so much more vicious and vile than I remembered its having been, but there it was on tape - proof that I was the worst mother in the world. I may have erased that incident from the vacation video, but I don't think I'll ever be able to erase it from my memory.

Like it or not, most of us parents flip out in front of our dear children from time to time. Sometimes the anger is aimed at them, other times not, but it's almost always a deeply unsettling experience. Fortunately, there are simple - sometimes surprising - steps you can take to repair the damage, not to mention avoid meltdowns in the future.

The High Price of Losing It

First, recognize that regularly lashing out at or in front of your kids isn't par for the parenting course. It can do some very real damage to their psyches, says psychologist Matthew McKay, Ph.D., a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA, and coauthor of When Anger Hurts Your Kids. "Studies have shown that parents who express a lot of anger in front of their kids end up with less empathetic children. These kids are more aggressive and more depressed than peers from calmer families, and they perform worse in school. Anger has a way of undermining a kid's ability to adapt to the world," McKay says.

Gulp. And the younger the kid, the bigger the impact, experts say. "When children are little, you're their universe," says psychologist Robert Puff, Ph.D., author of Anger Work: How to Express Your Anger and Still Be Kind. "When you get angry, their world is shaken. By the time they get older, they have friends and other people in their lives to turn to, and that minimizes the impact." Also worth noting: The occasional, nonabusive freak-out is generally much less damaging than regular fireworks, which send a child the message that he or she is not safe and that there's something wrong with him, says McKay.

That said, kids can actually learn an important lesson from seeing you lose your temper and then regain your cool. "This provides an opportunity to show kids that we all get angry, but what really counts is how we repair things afterward," says McKay. Here, the step-by-steps for doing just that.

When You Shriek at Your Kids

Real-mom meltdown: When Jennifer*, of Huntington Beach, CA, went to visit Disneyland with her three kids, she didn't realize the "happiest place on Earth" would be the setting for one of her ugliest parenting moments. "It was a big outing for us, and the park was very hot and crowded that day," she recalls. "Two of my kids have cystic fibrosis and could use a special pass to bypass the lines. But my 13-year-old went and lost his. Out of nowhere, I yelled, 'You've got to be bleeping kidding me. What the hell is wrong with you?' Immediately, my son started to cry. He had never heard me swear or be so mean to him, and he was devastated. Everyone standing around us was looking at me in disgust. I had to keep apologizing. Tears were streaming down my face because I had obviously hurt him so much."

A University of New Hampshire study found that 90 percent of parents admitted to having hollered at their children, ages 2 to 12, within the course of a year (the other 10 percent must have either been angels or had selective memories).

To avoid a scream-fest, try this trick: In that white-hot moment of anger, visualize your child as a baby, says Sandra P. Thomas, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and coauthor of Use Your Anger: A Woman's Guide to Empowerment. "Older kids and teens are not adorable like babies, and sometimes they can be very obnoxious," she explains. "When you remember them as the babies they once were, that can do some good."

So can taking a break. "If you're able, take a time-out and walk into another room, even if it's just for a minute or two," says psychologist Laura J. Petracek, Ph.D., author of The Anger Workbook for Women. The key here is getting some literal distance from the situation and recovering your sense of calm.

If your anger has already boiled over, the most important thing now is to own up to what you've done wrong. Don't give in to the temptation to blame your child for triggering your outburst. "Say, 'I am very disappointed at your carelessness, but I shouldn't have yelled like that. It was wrong for me to lose it in that way, and I'm very sorry,' " advises Thomas. (Tip: Don't overdo the apology - if you dwell on it, it can make a kid feel as if he's truly been victimized.) Then promise that you will try your best not to do it again, comfort your child as needed, and move on.

When You Spar With Your Spouse

Real-mom meltdown: Angie*, of Seattle, says life has been particularly stressful since her husband lost his job - and their arguments sometimes play out in front of daughter Lexi, age 3. "Just last night, I was yelling at him for not cleaning the house," she confesses. "Lexi came over, tugged on my shirt, and said, 'Be nice to Daddy.' The look in her eyes was one of terror; it stopped me in my tracks. We eventually made up and tried to assure her that Mommy and Daddy still loved each other, but I don't know if she bought it."

It can be devastating for a child to see her parents get furious with each other, warns Charles Spielberger, Ph.D., a psychologist who specializes in the study of anger at the University of South Florida. It's important to circle back quickly and do damage control. Don't try to explain the situation away by reciting a laundry list of ways in which your spouse provoked you - this will only further embroil your children in the drama and stress. "Instead, you might say, 'I was really mad at your dad earlier. We've talked about it, and we're working it out. People who live together get angry sometimes. We're sorry for yelling. We still love each other,' " Thomas recommends. Even if you still want to throttle your spouse, telling your kids you are smoothing things over will help ease their fears and make them feel more secure.

If you can, emphasize what you'll do differently next time, says Jerry Deffenbacher, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Colorado State University, who studies anger issues; this will help a child learn from the experience. For instance: "I was mad that your dad burned the garlic bread, but I apologize; I shouldn't have shouted at him like that. I was frazzled from a really hard day. Next time, we'll remember to set the kitchen timer when we use the oven."

Keep further comments to a minimum. Overexplain yourself, and you could wind up turning your kid into a mediator or therapist, cautions Puff. There's no need to drag her even deeper into your drama.

When You Argue With a Stranger

Real-mom meltdown: While Fiona*, of Detroit, was buckling her youngest son into his car seat after a trip to a bakery, an older driver pulled up near her and began honking. "He was screaming, 'Close your f--door!' without having given me any warning that I was blocking his spot. I raged right back, 'Can't you see I'm putting my baby in his car seat, you $%*#@?!' My tween in the backseat was pretty rattled by my outburst, and I felt horrible about it."

Your first instinct might be to apologize to your kids for having gotten mad - but don't. Everyone gets angry, so you shouldn't be sorry for having experienced this emotion. (This is especially important if you have daughters - girls from a young age are told they shouldn't show anger, says Puff, encouraging them to bottle up their feelings.)

Instead, tell the kids what set you off. Explains McKay: "You might say, 'That man said something that really hurt my feelings, and I got very upset.' " Next, apologize for how you expressed your anger. "Make sure they know that swearing - or whatever you did - was not the appropriate reaction," says Thomas. "Emphasize that you would never want them to act that way." Also say you are sorry if your outburst scared or embarrassed them. (Let's face it - it probably did.) Explain that you let your emotions get the best of you, and that you'll handle it better next time. And then comes the real challenge: making sure that you do.

Short-Circuiting Your Anger

To keep your cool going forward, follow these ground rules:

1. Ask the right question When a child is being difficult and your temper is about to flare, follow this advice from McKay: Instead of thinking, Why is he doing this to me?, focus on the child; he's probably acting out for a reason. Is he hungry, bored, tired, or in need of attention? Try to meet his need instead of letting your anger get the best of you.
2. Keep an anger journal that documents when you lose your cool. "Look for patterns - what time of day do you get angriest? Under what circumstances?" advises Deffenbacher. "Once you identify those anger 'flash points' in your life, brainstorm ways to minimize them." You can even get your kids in on the act: Say, "It irritates me when you ignore your chores - how can we make this a better situation?" By giving your kids a voice, you're empowering them to be part of the solution.
3. Minimize marriage spats "In a calm moment, you and your spouse should agree to handle your next argument differently," Deffenbacher says. "Give yourselves permission to walk away if you're getting too angry in front of the kids. Develop a code word for when you are getting really mad, and let that signal that you'll discuss the issue later, in private, when you're calmer."
4. Talk through your emotions out loud when you're with your kids and a stranger annoys you. "Say, 'Wow, that person just cut me off - how rude! But maybe there's an emergency she had to deal with, or she just didn't see me. Whatever the case, I'm not going to let it ruin my day,' " recommends Deffenbacher. By doing this, you're modeling how to handle life's everyday frustrations - and how to control your anger before it controls you. ( Team Mom )

READ MORE - The Danger of Yelling at Your Kids and Ways to Be a Calmer Mom

Top Five Personality Traits Employers Hire Most

Top Five Personality Traits Employers Hire Most - I don't care about your degree. Are you the right guy for the job? - I know you: You’ve made looking for your next job, well… your job. You’ve scoured your resume of clichéd buzzwords, brushed up on body language and even gotten a handle on the dreaded video interview.

But all that might be for naught if you just don’t have the personality your dream employer is looking for. New research shows that the vast majority of employers (88%) are looking for a “cultural fit” over skills in their next hire as more and more companies focus on attrition rates. Lucky for you, we’ve drilled down into data from 1,200 of the world’s leading employers (think General Electric, P&G and Accenture) to find precisely the personalities big business is looking for.

Universum, the Stockholm-based employer branding firm that annually surveys over 400,000 students and professionals worldwide on jobs-related issues, has culled their data to the top five personality traits employers are looking for in job candidates in 2012. How’s that for a leg up on the competition?

“We surveyed employers to get a handle on the challenges that face them in hiring,” says Joao Araujo of Universum. “What are they looking for in employees and what are they not finding?” By identifying both traits, he says, aspiring job applicants can both identify the most sought after traits—and brush up resumes and interview tactics to best position themselves.

Professionalism (86%), high-energy (78%) and confidence (61%) are the top three traits employers say they are looking for in new hires. Kathy Harris, managing director of Manhattan-based executive search firm Harris Allied says these first-impression traits are the most critical for employers to prepare for as they all can be evaluated by a recruiter or hiring manager within the first 30 seconds of meeting a candidate.

“A manager can read you the moment you walk in the door,” she says; from the clothes you wear to the way you stand to the grip of your first hand-shake, presenting yourself as a confident, energetic professional is about as basic as career advice gets. But don’t be off-put by this commonplace advice. Harris, who specialized in high-level executive placement says even the most seasoned of CEOs can get tripped up by the basics. Universum clients agree: confidence ranks highest on the list of skills companies think employees are missing most.

“We remind every candidate of the most granular advice,” she says. The most successful applicant is the one who walks into every interview with her hand outstretched for a handshake, has done her homework on the interviewer and company and is dressed to fit effortlessly into the culture of the workplace.

The remaining personality traits that Universum clients say are critical in the hiring process aren’t ones that can be read on-sight but instead call for both resume and interview preparation. To present yourself as a self-monitoring (58%) personality type, Harris says to adjust resume language to call attention to work experience where you’ve worked independently or excelled without the guidance of direct leadership. “In interviews, chose anecdotes that show how you’ve saved, made or achieved in previous positions… and how self-motivation was critical to that success.”

Intellectual curiosity (57%) is, fittingly, a curious trait for Harris, who says she generally advises clients to tightly edit the “hobbies and interests” sections of their resumes. “I’d imagine that in looking for intellectual curiosity employers are looking for two things,” she says. “The ability to problem solve and the ongoing dedication to learning new technologies or solutions that will continue to advance in the changing workplace.” Employers are asking themselves whether new hires will be with the company for the long term, she says. An employee who will grudgingly adopt a new database is not as attractive as one who is truly passionate about learning new things. ( Forbes )

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Creative ways to say “I love you”

Creative ways to say “I love you” - They’re three little words, but man, are they powerful ones! Telling someone that you feel this way is always quite a moment — some people, however, go above and beyond the call of duty and concoct romantic gestures that are incredibly thoughtful and personal. Let these stories serve as some food for thought if you want a new way to express how much someone means to you.

I got my fave sweets from my sweetie

“One night, my date and I went to the movies and I was talking about how I only liked pink Starburst — there were so many other horrid flavors (orange got a particularly harsh review). So the next time he saw me, he gave me a huge box full of pink Starburst with a letter in it explaining that he realized he loved me when I was being absolutely unreasonable about something as dumb as a candy... and he still adored me. I still remember that gesture to this day.” — Jacynth LeMaistre, 29, Palo Alto, CA

He put himself to the test... but we both won

“This guy and I had been casually dating and were slowly growing to like each other. But I think both of us were too bashful to come out and say so… that is, until one afternoon when we were lying on the beach. I was reading Cosmopolitan, and there was this quiz in it called: “Is It Love Or Lust For You?” Surprisingly, he volunteered to take the quiz — and answered all the questions (except, notably, one about whether he favored soccer over a girlfriend) in a very ‘it’s love’ kind of way. By the end of the test, I had my answer!” — Sandra Heikkinen, 30, San Francisco, CA

Great minds think alike, even when they don’t follow the same morning ritual

“I don’t drink coffee, but the man I was dating did — so one morning after I’d spent the night at his place, I brewed a pot. Surprised, he asked me why, given that I wouldn’t be drinking it. Tongue in cheek, I told him it was my way of saying, ‘I love you.’ He joked that I should do it more often, and so I did. It turned into this thing where every time I made him coffee it was me saying, ‘I love you.’ Sometimes I’d do it after a fight, and it would always get a smile. One day I was out running errands at Target and I found myself in appliances, where there was a coffee grinder. So as a laugh, I picked it up and took it home to him. When I gave him the gift, he started laughing hysterically. I didn’t understand why until he went to his closet and pulled out a coffee grinder! It turns out he’d bought me one, too — so I could tell him that I loved him more often!” — Sharlene Smithers, 32, Vancouver, BC

I was there with her in spirit — and in her heart

“My girlfriend was kind of a high-strung individual, but I’d never seen her as bad as the morning she was headed for a huge job interview. It was something she really wanted, so she was obsessing over every little detail of her appearance and talking to herself in the mirror, practicing what she wanted to say. So I watched her leave in a flurry of anxiety, waited until about five minutes before she was scheduled to go in, then sent her a text message, because I knew she’d look at her phone before she went in to turn off the ringer. The text said, ‘I believe in you. You’re amazing, talented, and an asset to any company that is willing to take you on. I’m right there with you — break a leg!’ She said the text came in at just the perfect time, and it calmed her down to know I supported her. She aced the interview and got the job… and knew how I felt about her, too.” — Adam Grayson, 26, Granada Hills, CA

His super-thoughtful care package revealed his feelings for me

“One day I was so sick that I couldn’t move off of the couch — I really was that weak — and I had to take a couple days of PTO. I was dreading how I was going to pass the time (seeing as I’m not big on soap operas and game shows), until one morning when my boyfriend dropped by on his way to work. He brought me a box filled with all of my favorite chick flicks — Legally Blonde, The Notebook, 10 Things I Hate About You, Working Girl, When Harry Met Sally…, etc. The list was endless — and he thoughtfully included some trashy romance novels, gossip magazines, and cold meds designed to knock me out if all of that didn’t work. Then he called and checked on me throughout the day. It was all so sweet, and not only did it show he cared for me, but that he listened — that pile of movies alone was the proof.” — Jennifer Dougall, 30, Toronto, ON

His attentiveness kept me feeling safe and sound during our first vacation together

“My boyfriend and I had been dating for only a couple of months when we decided to take a trip to Las Vegas together. You know those in-room safes they stick in the closet? I always put really important stuff in there — like most of the contents of my wallet — because I don’t like taking more than one piece of ID, some cash, and a credit card in my pocket when I hit the town. We were getting ready to go out for the night when I went to the safe and couldn’t open it. I asked him if he’d programmed it already and he said, ‘Yeah, the code is 0602.’ I was stunned — that was my birth date! When I told him that, he said, ‘I know’ and gave me a little smile, then continued getting ready for the evening. I was flabbergasted for most of the night, especially considering I think I had mentioned my birth date maybe once in passing at that point. That small gesture showed me that not only did he pay attention to what I was saying, but that I was in his heart and his mind, too.” — Jane Miller, 31, Los Angeles, CA

The way to both of our hearts? Through our stomachs, of course!

“My girlfriend and I have a silly little way of saying ‘I love you’ to each other. We each prefer to pack a lunch for work, and we usually make sandwiches. Instead of appointing one of us as the designated sandwich maker, we made a pact: No matter if we’re at her place or mine, whoever gets ready and downstairs first gets to tackle this daily chore. Somewhere along the way, a sweet little tradition began: We leave love notes in each other’s lunch bags. Sometimes it’s just a little slip of paper saying ‘I love you’ or ‘Last night was soooo hot!’ Other times it’ll say something just plain silly, like ‘Your love is better than salted, cured meats!’” ( yahoo.match.com )

READ MORE - Creative ways to say “I love you”