Hmmm. I shall email you instead.
Love grows = accumulating lack of disappointments in/from your lover.
Kirk, I had a VERY similar realtionship with my ex of 5 & 1/2 years. A strong base, great friendship, trust, mutual intimacy, shared living, etc. But there was that intangible something that nagged at me that told me this was not a marriage-bound situation. We were planning and 9 months away from the date before the courage came to end it. Now, we both see much clearer that there is something more that needs to be present (even at the risk of losing one of the other factors) to have made that a successful marriage. After a year and half of being apart, each day that truth is more evident. I don't trust the "you just know" logic either. But, as much as I want to believe friendship and best friends who can build upon that base have a better shot at marriage than their lust-lorn counterparts, I have not seen evidence of that being the case.
Concerning that e-mail to you regarding this situation, Kirk, I hope I didn't come off as preachy or condescending or anything like that. I can tend to do that. . .in many ways, I'm really interested in hearing about any other thoughts you or anyone else has on the differences between the bonds of strong friendship and romantic relationships, but it's like, I feel like sometimes to learn, I need to make my impressions known and my knowledge known. I apologize for bad impressions I may have left in the e-mail. I really just want to understand you and these kinds of things more.
Stop apologizing so much Lex! It was a good e-mail...I just haven't had time to get back to it, but silence != irritation.
I'm still trying to get my head around your impression of Mo being a lot more gregarious. For me it's kind of odd, especially when I was the one keeping up the connections with mutual friends, arranging dinners and what not.
It's occured to me lately that I might be hard to pin down on the traditional introvert/extrovert scale because maybe in my family we tend to be introverts w/ a kind of "show biz" streak, we don't mind being the center of attention sometimes.
You're right in that sometimes I do have a maybe too utilitarian view of romance, though I wouldn't quite put it at the customer rep level ;-)