On the occasion of Valentine’s Day, an analysis carried out by the start-up Ma vie en LIVRE reveals a reality far from romantic clichés. Based on more than 2,000 audios and dozens of hours of intimate stories, it highlights the words that the French spontaneously use to talk about love. Simple, concrete words, deeply anchored in everyday life.
When love is said without big words
Bouquets, candlelight dinners, fiery declarations… Every year, Valentine’s Day features spectacular love. However, when we listen to couples tell their story over time, the vocabulary changes radically. This is what the analysis carried out by Ma vie en LIVRE, a start-up specializing in biography based on oral stories, shows.
Out of thousands of testimonies transformed into books, the words that appear most often in the pages devoted to love life are neither “passion” nor “romantic”. At the top: “together” (more than 10 occurrences per book), followed by “hands/hand”, “stay”, “close”, “habits” and “daily”. So many terms that tell of a love experienced, shared, embodied over time.
Conversely, certain words traditionally associated with love are surprisingly little present: “tenderness”, “romantic”, “promise” or even “miss”. Even the word “heart” only appears once on average. A trend which draws another definition of love: less declarative, more relational.
“Together”: the key word for stories that last
Among all the terms noted, “together” stands out as the common thread. It translates a conception of love based on co-presence and shared time, much more than on immediate emotion.
“Being a couple is not just being two people side by side, it is creating a third entity, a separate space that is built over time“, analyzes Anaïs Boutin, psychoanalyst and couples therapist in Paris. “This “we” is transmitted in gestures, looks, the contact of one hand in another.“
A vision confirmed by testimonies. Ariane, 44, in a relationship for 21 years, talks about these invisible but essential rituals: “I like waking up every morning with this simple phrase: “Did you sleep well?” The rare times she wasn’t there, it did something to me.“
In these stories, to love is also to stay. Not by constraint, but by choice. Stay when life gets complicated, when enthusiasm gives way to routine. A word that comes back as a voluntary, almost militant act.
Gestures rather than statements
Second most frequent word: “hands”. A seemingly small detail, but a powerful symbol. The hand that touches, that supports, that reassures. The discreet language of couples.
“Love must be translated into everyday life, in very simple gestures: “I’ll button your dress, I’ll give you your comb“, says Claude, 89 years old, married for 67 years. “That’s what being attentive is.“
These stories are little about “I love you” repeated endlessly. Above all, they tell what we do for each other, day after day. A love which cannot be proclaimed, but which is proven through constancy and repetition.
The triumph of everyday life in love stories
Another strong lesson from this analysis: the central place of everyday life. Where love was once structured by rites – meeting, marriage, symbolic anniversaries – it is today defined more by ordinary life.
Julie, 39, married and mother of three children, does not cite a significant event when asked about the moment she would like to relive with her partner: “This is the daily life that I have loved to share with him for ten years.”
These words say something profoundly societal. The French seem less to seek an idealized love than a love that lasts over time, through fatigue, through similar days.
Another idea for a Valentine’s Day gift
In light of these stories, Valentine’s Day changes perspective. Less a celebration of decorative romance than a tribute to enduring love. It is in this spirit that Ma vie en LIVRE offers a box set allowing you to transform memories told orally into a printed book.
The principle is simple: answer questions out loud, let the story be written and formatted, then receive your story in book form. A way to celebrate love not as we imagine it, but as it is truly experienced — together, every day.