Prince Harry ‘Analyzed’ Himself After Saying I Love You to Meghan Markle
Among the many things Prince Harry opened up about in his Spare memoir was telling Meghan Markle, “I love you.” When, where, and how the Duke of Sussex said the words that “had been on the tip of” his “tongue almost from the start” and how he later “analyzed” himself.
Harry told Meghan he loved her while they made dinner at Nottingham Cottage
September 2017 marked a significant point in the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s relationship. Harry and Meghan made their first public appearance as a couple. And, as Harry revealed in Spare, he’d also told Meghan he loved her the same month.
They’d been inside Nottingham Cottage, or “Nott Cott,” making dinner. Harry recalled the “whole cottage” as being “filled to overflowing” with love.
While Meghan sat on the other side of the kitchen putting dishing out food, Harry “considered” his “new life” and how much he “cherished” it. Suddenly, “without thinking” he “blurted out: ‘I don’t know, I just …” before he “froze, mid-sentence, hesitant to go on.”
“You don’t know what, Haz?” Meghan asked before Harry finally said, “I love you.” No response. Then Meghan approached Harry and replied, “I love you too, Haz.”
“The words had been on the tip of my tongue almost from the start, so in one sense they didn’t feel particularly revelatory, or even necessary,” Harry remembered. “Of course I loved her. Meg knew that. Meg could see it, the whole world could.”
“I loved her with all my heart as I’d never loved anyone before,” he continued. “Any yet saying it made everything real. Saying it set things in motion, automatically. Saying it was a step. It meant we now had a few more very big steps ahead. Like … moving in together?”
Harry asked if Meghan would consider moving into Nott Cott with him before they discussed the “logistics.” Ultimately, Meghan agreed to relocate after Harry confirmed it would be a “forever commitment.”
Prince Harry felt a ‘big streak of relief’ after being ‘braced for the worst case’ when he said ‘I love you’
Harry confessed he “analyzed” himself” — “A holdover from therapy, perhaps.” — after Meghan fell asleep later that night.
“I realized that, mixed in with all my roiling emotions, there was a big streak of relief,” he shared. “She’d said it back, the actual words, I love you, and it hadn’t been inevitable, it hadn’t been a formality.”
“Part of me, I couldn’t deny, had been braced for the worst case,” he added, picturing what Meghan might’ve said. “‘Haz, I’m sorry but I just down know if I can do this …’”
“Part of me feared she’d bolt,” Harry explained. “Go back to Toronto, change her number. Heed the advice of her girlfriends. Is anyone worth this? Part of me thought she’d be smart to do so.”
Meghan Markle had ‘never been more in love’ with Prince Harry than during Princess Lilibet’s birth
Elsewhere in Spare, Harry revisited the birth of his and Meghan’s daughter, Princess Lilibet, on June 4, 2021. Wanting to be the first face Lili saw, Harry pulled the now-1-year-old “from that world into this” before handing the newborn to Meghan.
Later, back at their Montecito, California, home, Meghan confessed she’d “never been more in love with” Harry “than in that moment.” Harry claimed she called it “everything” before showing him the words she’d written in a journal.
“I read them as a love poem,” Harry recalled. “I read them as a testament, a renewal of our vows. I read them as a citation, a remembrance, a proclamation. I read them as a decree. She said: That was everything. She said: That is a man. My love. She said: That is not a Spare.”
