A Personal Oddity of Emotional Expression

I'm a scientist.  I'm not a poet, an artist, writer, or orator.  Well, I think there's a pretty convincing case to be made that mathematics and seeing the beauty of nature in the laws that govern it have artistic merit, I'm at least an amateur writer (I have, like I suspect many do, a few beginnings to books, short stories, or articles), and am actually a pretty decent public speaker (though maybe not anymore, I haven't really done any public speaking for quite a while), but I'm speaking here to my outlook on the world and my communication with others and a scientific outlook has strongly influenced these aspects of who I am.  There's two things that I find especially influenced by this background; objectivity and concern for clarity.

I explain that so I can explain this, it's very difficult and a little odd for me to tell my wife I love her.  Not because I don't, I'm madly in love with her.  Not because I think there's anything wrong or strange about it either, but because it's so hard to know what I'm saying.  Often when we are sitting in our apartment together I let those words, "I love you," sum things up, hoping that my feelings are transmitted correctly.  In other moments though, when I want to expound on what that means, on the way I'm excited by her beautiful form, the softening spark in me of her amazing smile, the joy I take in her fun personality, or the deep passion when I notice how well read and thoughtful she is, I don't know what to say.

One thing is I feel like I've said it all before, and I hate repetition.  Rather, perhaps, I know that expressing something in a new way is more powerful than repeating something you've heard before.  Heard enough times anything can seem clichéd.  How many different ways are there to say, "You're beautiful and I'm very attracted to you," though?  I have a fairly formidable vocabulary, but still there are only so many synonyms for beautiful, happy, and love that one can use meaningfully.

Often, and bear with me through the cheesiness of this statement, words seem inadequate.  I can tell how I'm feeling, but how do I express that?  And moreover, when I feel something so powerfully, how do I express that with equal power?  If I'm to be clear in communicating my feelings, what do I do when I feel something which seems more potent than the words I've been using.  Moments where recognition of all her glorious beauty flares up in a way that I guess I've felt before, but certainly feels new and exhilarating surely can't be expressed in a simple, "You're so pretty/beautiful/stunning/gorgeous/sexy," when I've already said that many times before, ¿can they?

I've mentioned before that I have a certain emotional austerity.  That doesn't mean I don't feel strongly, I do. It does mean I usually hold off on expressing what I feel, and moreover that when I do I try to strengthen what I say about those feelings in an alloy of emotion, thought, reason, possibly evidence, and probably sources.  I can't really do that when I express my love for my wife.  I know it's my subjective experience, I know that it's the way I feel, heck I even have an idea of some of the neurochemistry and cerebral circuitry that's powering and processing it, but still my love is real, and I want to let her know that.  I'm learning a lot as I learn how to say it.