Note to self: never say "I could do that", because fact is, I didn't.

If the fall into love happened so rapidly, it is perhaps because the wish to love has preceded the beloved - the need has invented its solution.  The appearance of the beloved is only the second stage of a prior (but largely unconscious) need to love someone - our hunger for love moulding their features, our desire crystallizing around them

-Alain de Botton "Essays in Love"