Warm greetings to the whole who-am-I-to-say-no-to-love gang. As you may have guessed your (favourite) writer is head over heels in love with someone’s son.

Respectfully, to haters, we will have to push to the back of your mind the considerably high probability that it may end in tears.

Let’s just, for now at least, focus on the part that I have a stupid grin pinned on my face as I write this article. Simply because the thought of this particular human provokes such an effect on the rather contained girl I am, or pretend to be, it depends.

We are also going to ignore, for the moment, that love can’t help but complicate our lives. We are going to shove aside the possibility that the person you love may not necessarily feel the same way towards you, or that they may also love you, but the relationship will still fail to take off. Sadly, we all know feelings are not enough for a happily-ever-after.

But, nevertheless, we are going to talk about that beautiful feeling. The ‘butterflies in the stomach’, or simply the signs that indicate you are in love with someone.

A friend recently asked me as we were taking a stroll, "how did you know it was him?” This dear person is of the idea that love is a choice and that we choose to direct it towards who we want.

She believes that when two people agree on the terms that would make their love, it cannot fail because they would both be working towards the same goal, having the same expectations of each other.

Oh, how I wish life was that easy. It goes without saying that I don’t agree with her. In this piece I will attempt to answer her question on how I knew I was in love with my guy. However, matters of how to make a relationship work will be a topic for another day.

Just in case, though, if any of you has the ultimate secret of making a relationship such an easy thing as she makes it sound, please feel free to drop your suggestions.

I knew I was in love with him when I started thinking about him all the time. I don’t know how but this young man just started dominating my thoughts. I frequently found myself thinking back to our last interaction or planning our next meeting.

I wanted to tell him about my experiences every day, the great, the awful, and the ordinary. I was easily worried about him, his difficulties and thinking of ways to help. I started wondering whether my loved ones would love him too or if he would like them.

I knew I loved him when I wanted to be around him all the time, and feel safe having him around. Except of course for the pounding heart and tension, I was generally comfortable with him. Time is definitely not on my side anymore, it seems to fly by when we’re together and crawls like a turtle when we’re apart.

God knows I’m a very understanding and self-confident person, but I started wondering what the hell he was doing in the time we’re apart. I mean ‘who were you with and why are you so happy about being with them’ kind of suspicion. Nowadays I’m like ‘if she is a cousin, a sister, a co-worker, etc., please tell them to put some distance when they talk to you darling’ ‘and oh, why are they ‘sweethearting’ you?’

I suddenly found myself including him in my future plans, like I want to invite him for a friend’s birthday party, I want to go hike that mountain with him, I want to attend that wedding with him, or better yet, I want to marry him!

My point is, anything seems fun with him in it. I knew I was a lost cause when I started falling for the most insignificant of details about him. For example, now I can proudly assert that handsomeness is relative, so I’m sorry if you don’t think he is attractive. Matter of fact, it’s not necessary for a boyfriend to be six feet tall, leave me alone.