Dear Diva Rebecca,

I need help! I'm totally head over heals in love with this girl, and I so can't stand to be without her so I pester her all the time. The problem is, we live far away in separate states. I'm worried that I'll saturate her with attention and cause her to get sick of me; or that I'll lose my "unattainable" mystique. The problem is, I'm so totally in love with this girl that I just can't stay away, I have to call her and IM her and beg her to visit, basically to get attention from her in any way that I can. I've never felt this way about anybody before and I really don't want to screw it up before we get a chance to be close to one another. I have never pestered someone so much before, I don't know what is wrong with me! I know that once we get near to each other things are going to be awesome; and we are planning on a big move to be with each other in only a few months. How can I keep myself happy and not scare away this awesome girl?

Sincerely,

The Knave of Hearts
Charlottesville, VA

Dear Knave of Hearts,

It sounds to me, and to everyone else reading this, that you actually have a GOOD problem. You have been officially bitten by the love bug. The venom of this bug acts like a happy drug giving you that euphoric and pleasant high. You are floating on cloud nine right now and you feel like nothing will pull you down. Everyone has been there at some point in time! What a glorious feeling. I, myself, am in love with love.

You may think that you are acting weird but there are actual medical reasons attributing to your behaviors concerning this lucky girl. They say when men and women "fall in love" the testosterone hormone becomes lower in the man and higher in the female. Some scientists theorize that this helps the love struck couple to be more like each other and have fewer differences. In other words, the male starts acting more like a female while the female acts more like a male and they meet in the middle. Another chemical change is a decrease in the serotonin level. The level of serotonin in the body of a man in love actually resembles that of a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder. This could explain your one track mind, couldn't it? Right now you feel obsessed with her but you can now rationalize it! Don't you feel better?

Eventually your hormone levels will right themselves and you will begin to feel normal again. But I hope this does not happen too soon because that blissful feeling that love promotes is the most wonderful feeling that anyone can ever obtain. You are very lucky to have found someone that makes you feel this way. They can be few and far between.

You say that you are worried you will scare her away. At least you are conscious of your actions. Many people behave this way with every single relationship they enter and end up scaring the other person away by becoming too demanding or leachy right away. I know that having a long distance relationship can be hard. But by the sounds of it, she is right there with you if you two are planning that big move you speak of. If you were anywhere near in danger of pushing her away, this girl would not be thinking about picking up her whole entire life and just moving. She would have to be absolutely sure about the relationship, and in love too. So it is my fabulous guess that she is.

There is not much you can do while you are in a long distance relationship to push her away too hard. I mean, you two don't even see each other that often (yet). All you can do is talk on the phone. That is not that pushy. Things I would avoid would be trying to control her, asking her a thousand questions about who she went out with and where and calling back every five minutes if she doesn't answer the phone. These are obvious no-no's that everyone should avoid.

Good luck on the move and congratulations on finding that girl that makes your heart go "pitter-patter".

Sincerely,

Diva Rebecca