well, at the risk of starting some sort of scandal, i wasn't talking about Mrs. post.
Mrs. post, i grew to love over time - and at least in my life, this turned out to be the sort of love that is marriage: a love that was built, layer on layer, and blossomed, and became established through shared struggle and turmoil and perseverance.
I replied because I know that there really is a genuine, lasting love that can come from 'at first sight' infatuation - for me it is, you might call Platonic. Sometimes I wonder if she and I would still care for each other like we do, would still be friends, if we had ever spent the kind of wholesale time together that a marriage involves - or of we'd come to find differences between ourselves that we couldn't resolve by mutual affection. I do think, if we hadn't kept our relationship pure, we would not still be close today. And I think, maybe I ought to thank God that He's kept us at distance, whether this has helped our friendship last as long as it has.
I do thank God for Mrs post daily - don't read this wrong. But to be honest the love I share with her isn't the kind of starry-eyed ooh, look at her, *must meet* love at first sight thing. I did not respect or cherish her in the early days of our relationship nearly as much as I do now, and that keeps increasing every year. It's turned out to be something more subtle, yet greater in the end. It's a love that wasn't immediately apparent to me but has persisted and strengthened over time.
So my advice is to talk to her, or him. Talk to them like they might be a friend for life - but don't assume they are your life partner just because of butterflies in your stomach, and don't assume that those butterflies are nothing more than hormones either. The relationships that last are the ones that go beyond the physical, so build those. It doesn't have to become an intimate relationship to be real love