March 2001
A poster on alt.polyamory quoted one David Aaron (who I presume is a writer?) regarding the matter of how one person comes to love another. Apparently, he says that it is impossible to love until one knows the other person. The process of getting to know that person, and making room for their faults as well as their virtues, he calls "climbing in love." This is my response to that observation.
I know that I don't really trust my reactions to someone until I know that I am perceiving their imperfections and flaws as well as their virtues. If all I can see is good stuff, I know that I'm missing important data, since nobody is perfect (or anywhere near it really) - and in those sorts of situations, I tend to think that the fact that I'm not seeing any flaws is a product of my own infatuation, with me "filling in the details" mentally when there is insufficient data to draw a real conclusion about a particular attribute or characteristic. And given that, I will expect that my reaction to the person, being based on infatuation and my own imagination, is likely to change as I get to know them better.
When I am comfortable that I'm getting a reasonably good impression of someone's flaws as well as their virtues, it is only then that I am willing to take my own reactions on face value a little more. If my reactions are based on a reaslistic, three-dimensional impression of a person, then it seems rather more likely to me that I am actually reacting to the person themselves rather than an idealised and somewhat self-generated portrait of them. And that's the point when I'm willing to accept that such affection as I am developing for them is real, and is based on their actual characteristics rather than my own wishful thinking.