Earlier this year on the phone with my mom when her husband was having a hard time in the hospital with his MS. Our usual routine when a phone call ends is for her to say "I love you" and I will say "talk to you later... bye". It didn't seem tactful to do that given the situation she was currently in. Thinking on it here, this is the only circumstance under which I have ever invoked that phrase. I have never said it spontaneously. I have never said it first, always as reply. I have never said it to someone who isn't a member of my immediate family. I am not sure that I have ever said it and actually meant it. It is not an emotion I understand, which follows then that I have never felt it. That might sound cold, and I suppose it is from a certain perspective, but to me it's more like saying I have never been weightless in a zero gravity environment. There is a disconnect there for me. No frame of reference.