When is attraction reasonable?

[Spartan]

I'm not sure I even believe in that romanticised concept of love anymore. I have had crushes before when I was young and naive. The kind that made me feel butterflies in my stomach. However, I now think that that kind of feeling is only accessible to innocent, naive teens - something you mature out of.

What I believe now is that romantic love is just an obsession that occurs when one invests a lot of emotional energy thinking about a particular person in a romantic way.

Thus it would require me to repeatedly think about a particular person in a romantic way, for a prolonged period of time, before I became attached enough to consider myself 'in love'.

Since I have decided not to delude myself with romantic fantasies, I don't see how I can fall in love anymore?

I just feel sad now if I'm attracted to someone and begin to fantacize that they might be attracted to me. In fact I try to avoid eye contact with them, so I can forget about the delusion. Thus I am probably impossible to read for most girls. Also, I feel like I don't belong in a relationship. I feel like relationships are something other people have.

[SaberToothDream]

Spartan, I am in the same boat as you so I’m really glad you posted. I always have this problem where I am attracted to women but I don’t want to act on it because I’m afraid I’ll seem like a creep. So I tell myself I’ll wait for the right moment to say something, where it won’t seem bizarre, random and weird. But that moment hardly ever comes. The consensus seems to be the same that attraction is worth acting on, worth the risk of looking foolish; and it seems like advice worth taking. My brother has been telling me the same thing with respect to my situation. Really helpful thread!

[Vasilisa]

I don't understand anything. Why would a man who is just being a man and therefore attracted to pretty women seem a creep to anyone?
I think it's abolutely natural behavior. To me the one who has no attraction or desire would be strange.
Don't you feel sometimes that life without attachments and feelings just a waste of time? When you will be ending your journey here what will you remember? Your career, your posting on the Internet? Or some crazy love you experienced?