Did you feel your love grow, or did the realization of love hit you all at once?

I've watched over the years as the zing of initial love/lust has burnished into an ever-growing love.

Friends first is best. Then lovers. It grows and grows.

It sure does!

It was more of a quantum effect. Like electrons jumping to higher valances, our love jumped to higher and higher levels. Currently, our love is producing deadly levels of Cupid radiation.

I didn't figure out that it was love until sometime after it ended.

After two or three weeks of dating, she told me that she loved me. I almost pitied her naivete. Months later I realized that I was in love with her, too--and that I had been since I first met her.

The first hug....i knew...i think i admitted it to myself...and then i admitted it to him....5 months later...

I love Matt....

I can't even begin to describe how amazing and wonderful he is. Last night he just let me lay with him in bed and cry and finally when I calmed down, we just slept, and it was the most peace I've had in a long time. I've never met anyone more caring than him. I've loved him since I saw him. I never thought that would happen.

I didn't expect to fall in love with my boyfriend. I thought that I was too smart to go down that road again. But then one day I realized that I never wanted to be without him, that I wanted to spend my eternity with him and him only. My love has been growing ever since.

When I was 23, as I was exiting the school library, I met a friend who was coming into the library. I'd known him by then for 4 years, and he was someone I was fond of and on cuddling terms with, but I hadn't felt romantically attracted to him before. We greeted each other, and hugged hello... and the hug lingered... and suddenly I was *aware* of him in a way that I'd never been aware of him before. I went out into the evening... it was one of those electric, tingly rainstorm evenings in which the sky is this intense red-grey... I waited for the shuttle bus, and thought about that hug, and felt so charged by his touch that I ached.

And I knew I had to see him again soon and find out whether he felt it too. And we got together, and the attraction between us was so very very present. And I realized that it was more than just sexual - I loved him with every fiber of my soul. And I still do.