So why was this ♥♥♥ one of your greatest secrets?

On the bus ride home from Minnesota I was shellshocked. My brain had dropped the largest possible dose of chemicals into my pleasure centers all at once it seemed, my hands were shaking... I had never felt anything like this before. I laid my head against a window and realized I could still faintly hear the music as I watched the scenery roll by in the darkness. She was the one. I had to swear to myself that I would never love another as long as I lived. I would do whatever necessary to win her heart and be with forever. VERY DRAMATICALLY.

At this point my logic centers came back online: Didn't EVERYONE swear to love someone forsaking all others for the rest of their lives? Somehow many of these people ended up breaking up or getting divorced later on... "this was likely due to the people mistaking infatuation for true love" my inner-self explained back.

"But how does one tell the difference?"
"It is very hard to tell the difference"
"Still 'we' are smart enough to figure out a way, we owe that much to this girl, where our incorrect moves could potentially ruin the rest of both of our lives."
"On the other hand waiting too long allows for the possibility of her falling in love with someone else... I'm not sure that I would be able to take that."
"However currently we are not in a position of strength. If we wait we can better prepare ourselves to approach her and make her truly happy. ALSO:"

and then a long list was formed. INTPs are noted for doubting their own emotions, it comes from resenting the idea of being controlled; just as I would reflexively rebel against songs used by companies trying to control my actions and thoughts in order to get me to buy candy bars or sneakers my mind resented the implication that millions of years of evolution were now pushing me toward an illogical and undesirable set of actions in order for my genes to be passed on in the name of BABY PRODUCTION.

1. How am I sure that these feelings aren't merely a reflection of hormones being released in my pituitary gland? This is the time of life when most humans become interested in those of the opposite gender, perhaps this event is just some primeval reaction to a timer running out in the head, and now I am going to have experiences like this all of the time whenever someone I find nice or attractive is around...

2. Perhaps these feelings truly reflect man's natural will to hierarchy, to which there is no reason that I would be immune. In a drive for STATUS and ALL OF THE BEST STUFF, I would naturally want the best girl that I could find, abandoning my feelings for her as soon as a better girl came along. I see this girl as the best of all of them and therefore she is targeted as I generally desire the newest films or processors...

3. In 1997 there was a Fred Savage sitcom called "Working" on NBC, where the characters had discussed in one episode a concept called "close-cubicle syndrome", in which the more time you spend with a group of people the more attractive they seem to you as your relative sense of attractiveness was adjusted to your surroundings. Perhaps that was what had suddenly locked itself into my head causing emotional misattribution of reality...

4. Perhaps we each carry within ourselves a mental archetype of the "optimal companion", and the desirability of this girl had simply knocked the previous model out by appearance or action, now, blinded by beauty, it was causing me to believe that I loved her...

5. Perhaps (shudder) Freud was right and the "optimal companion" was one's relatives, in which case somehow this girl was reminding me of some properties or mental artifacts I had acquired from early childhood...

6. Maybe there was something in the hot chocolate, or the hot chocolate reacted to what I had eaten and combined with the cold air (where the molecules of oxygen would be more dense than in warm air, the human brain can get high on high-purity oxygen) and this had caused the illusion of madly falling in love...

7. Maybe developing these feelings were a defense mechanism by my mind to insulate me from the realities of the isolation and exclusion I might have been subconsciously feeling, so to prevent me becoming depressed or highly bored and killing myself- these feelings were an attempt for me to reach out beyond myself as a cry for help...

8. Perhaps love doesn't really exist at all, and these feelings would end with conscious persuasion on my part, just as how when you are really hungry you do not want to in fact eat an entire wedding cake...

9. It's human nature to always want what we cannot have, do I somehow view this person as unattainable? (Generally in my arrogance I assume anyone is within reach given a specific set of circumstances: hard determinism allows for any number of causal sequences leading to any possible outcome)

(and added a bit later) 10. What if feelings of attraction are merely the way of the mind to try to find the traits you most desire in yourself within the people around you?

... and on and on and on. I was first resolved to wait a while to see if these feelings went away naturally, and then I was going to do some serious research on the nature of human attraction psychology and see if I could totally obliterate or replace these emotions, because if I could that would clearly prove that this wasn't truly a life-shaking moment. For both our sakes I wanted to be sure.

Secrecy would allow me time to build the perfect maximally attractive and well-rounded personae with which I could keep her interested and happy through our life together (Totally nerve-wracking as any accidental first contact could form her perceptions in a flash-judgment of me and ruin our chances completely), and so after I verified over a few months that nothing was changing in respect to how I felt I began an aggressive project to become the most self-realized, spiritually centered, physically-fit, and brilliant person I could possibly become, from an introverted gamer into the perfect human.



I would question and test my feelings constantly, and use all of the considerable time and resources available to change myself without letting anyone catch on, it wouldn't be fair to burden my associates with an idea that they could inadvertently let slip if they were distracted and accidentally end up destroying my chance at true happiness against their best intentions. As Anne Boleyn kept King Henry guessing by feigning disinterest, likewise modern relationships potentially end when one is too easily conquered at an early stage causing the "Annie Hall” effect comes into play.