“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” — Elie Wiesel
A common French way to express feelings towards someone is to tell them “you don’t leave me indifferent”. The negation of a negation – the infamous double negative. The French-speaking Swiss do this a lot. Things aren’t good or delicious, they are not bad. If something is really good, it is not bad at all.
Using the double negative to say something good is wrong to me. It is a fear of expressing true feelings and opinions. I wish I could find something that has the subtlety of the “you don’t leave me indifferent”. Saying “I have feelings for you” sounds like the guy who is too scared to say “I have this mad crush on you”.
I guess that I am stuck with the phrase with the double negative. Between the wimps that kill the positive version and the meaning infused into the phrase through years of common usage, there really isn’t a better way of saying someone doesn’t leave you indifferent. It even seems to work in English 😦
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