Love

[loonygloss]

That feeling you get in the bottom of your stomach when your pulse races and your eyes dilate when you see this person... this is lust.  Unless your willing to die for this person and give UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, then its only a phase.  Sorry to break it to you  :P .  The Greek language best describes love in five different ways:

Aros - Erotic love
Philo - Brotherly love
Agape - Unconditional Love

...  :(  oh crap...  Mind having a complete blank-out.  Oh well.  I'm sure this isin't what you want to hear, but desite that nagging feeling in your heart telling you this is for real and not the same feeling you get when you look at nudie magazines or in the girls locker-room, I'd place your feelings for this person in the Aros category of love, and until you honestly know how she feels about you, your feelings are only betraying yourself.  Take a chance and ask her if she'd like to spend some time with you.  Once you get to know her, then you can surmise rather it is really love or not  :D .

Pretty sure that that's Eros, from which you get the word erotic :) Those Greeks. They sure had a few different words for love didn't they? There's also Storgi, or charity/loyalty but I don't know what the fifth one is either.

The Greeks seemed to have a different point of view to us - we(or the media) hold up romance and emotional love (eros), along with sex/lust (Not really eros, or at least, only one component of it). The Greeks considered loves like philos to be more edifying, as they seemed the most seperate from our instincts and biology, the most indicative of our status above the beasts.

Hopefully there's no Greek scholar out there to tell me that I've completely misinterpreted all of this. :)

But I echo others in saying that you should just spend time with her and get to know her better. Attempt to cultivate philo and agape, as that is what will last. Romantic love usually fizzles in a few years without a solid backing in these two.