Chickens and Love

I met up with my ex-Arabic teacher tonight (yes, at 10pm on a Sunday night. Who said I wasn't hardcore eh?). She's now a friend more than a teacher though, and so we all end up talking about most of the topics that any other group of mates would.

One thing mentioned last night was the difference between the Arab (she's Palestinian) and English ways of letting someone know that you liked them. Over there, they're more direct: "I love you". Over here it takes much more time for a person to declare such things. As my teacher put it, here you go out with someone before you love them, while over there it's the opposite. Aptly put, I thought.

We then turned to the related question of when to know you have these feelings. We were split on this, with one side saying you have to see someone formally to know them in a particular way, why myself and another suggested that it's perfectly possible to know whether you like (or detest) someone without necessarily "dating" them (ie via working together, or going out socially in groups). It was kind of established that it was a bit of a chicken and egg situation - as people not interested in non casual relationships, we needed something concrete to act on, but it seemed that to get that "evidence" some kind of uninformed risk had to be taken whether that's to see the real person in them, or show them the real person in yourself.

I'm still not sure about that, though it's a common fact that in other things the more you risk the more you return. Maybe that applies here too?