The fine lover's line

There is a really fine line between lover and friend, and I don't know if it's a male thing for it to be blurred or if women have a clearer sense of one and the other. But I've been wondering how that line gets drawn. And together with that, this thing known as the friend zone.

It's spoken about like this no mans land, an abyss that once having tumbled into you do not escape from. It feels like having a stigma attached; and it doesn't sit with being able to change. If we truly have the power to be whoever we wish to be, then it doesn't seem to fit becase nothing is meant to be certain or definite.

And yet there seems some subtlety that defines a person as a lover in a beholder's eye.

So what is the difference? Is it the attraction, is it the conversation - is it some arbitrary distinction drawn by beautifully valid but equally arbitrary emotions? Of all things in life, I found it hard not to marvel at emotions, their intensity and depth....but that's a digression to save for another day!

Being in a relationship seems about choice; those moments that you spend with someone you are choosing to be there. I have this nagging feeling that its about a person liking you for who you are and you for who they are - and surely those statements have got to include faults. And I know there can be so many other things; but for it to work anyway there'd be awillingness to work through them.

If you care about people for who they are, what about who they're not? Nobody can be all things to all people; is that the beauty of it? Surely that's what makes meeting someone special rare. And if so, when you find someone special how much should you do to hang on to them - and how much will it hurt if you cant, or if they don't see you that way? How do you know to choose to move on.