I've experienced the stomach-dropping, sudden-lusting version of falling in love. It's like a thrilling three-second free fall, marvelously disorienting. He approaches you, and when he leans over to say a few casual words in your direction it's like he's lighting a match to your loins. And the heat spreads slowly until you are flustered and flushed in the face and you blabber something just before you bolt in an effort to escape the vertigo overtaking you.
So the moth has met her flame. She'll return, helplessly, only to be singed again and again. And it takes some time for her to realize that really the ride was over as quickly as it began; that she's been effectively sleepwalking, unwilling to wake up from that first swoon and face the reality. She's not in love; she's just someone who got high on pheromones. He's not wonderful; he's just a guy her instinct propelled her to sleep with.
And when the dose wears off, there will not even be affection between them.
But I've also experienced the slow-moving, gradually-consuming version of falling in love. After I learned that love isn't necessarily what's left when sudden-lust burns off; urgent desire can be found with strangers and doesn't immediately signify anything deeper.
This kind of love doesn't make your stomach drop the moment you meet him, it doesn't make you see your children in his eyes when he introduces himself for the first time. At first you may not even be sure you like him. But because you never feel that sudden jolt, you don't know you're even falling.
Infatution is an elevator with a ground floor destination; it makes your heart flip, but almost as soon as you start moving you realize that it's already come to a stop and you're getting out.
But the love that takes a gradual approach has no destination, and you don't feel it happening because it doesn't slow down and it doesn't suddenly accelerate. One day you simply understand that you are somehow floating, and you wonder how long this has been the case. You are floating along in love now, not falling, and you look back and try to pinpoint the moment this happened the way you could everytime you "fell" for someone, but it's impossible.
I don't know when for sure I knew I loved the Russian lover, but it was some eight months after we started dating. I vaguely sensed that things had shifted somehow, that things between us had become weightier and more entangled. I realized that I cared; not in some general sense, but intimately. And I suspected that he felt the same. I wondered when the words "I love you" would slip out; not because I needed to know it, but because I was ready to be able to acknowledge it.
I started having dreams where he told me he loved me, and I would wake up sighing with relief. After a few weeks of these dreams, he finally did say the words. We were having an argument, something about the safety of my car as I was getting ready to leave, and finally in exasperation at my frustration over his concern, he nearly shouted "Because I love you, silly!" And I said "Oh. I love you, too." And he said "So just let me check the fucking oil."
The only thing nicer than loving someone is being freely able to tell them so. And while falling in love is exhilerating, actually being in love is a million times better.