It's not a matter of semantics, it's a matter of drawing a distinction between 2 emotions that are often confused with each other. Call it whatever you want, but what OP calls love is clearly not what a regular person would consider to be love. This distinction, which has been made by several other people in this thread as well, is important because people will and often do justify being a creep as that they're "in love." See how already so much of OP's argument hinges on the idea that he is in love? To be clear, he is very explicit that he is not just attracted to her - he is very clear that he believes he feels what a regular person would consider to be love.

Granted, in hindsight and given his responses so far, it seems unlikely that drawing this distinction would make a meaningful practical difference. But I fail to see how addressing one of the core parts of OP's arguments can be considered as meaningless argument over semantics

Whatever you say, brother. We're only here to provide advice. And so far, everyone's advice seems to be on the same page. It's your decision whether to take it.

I will however point out that, in fact, the modern consensus is that Romeo and Juliet were not in love and that it was, at best, a hormone-driven highschool crush that lasted less than a week

You’re… quoting an encyclopedia. On matters of romance and affection. You’re not coming across as “in love”; you’re coming across as infatuated. You’re in love with the idea of her, and the even more abstract idea of being in a relationship with her. I can just about guarantee you that reality is unlikely to fully match what you have in mind.

And… well, taken with your other replies and apparent reluctance to integrate and/or accept the rather consistent gist of the replies you’re getting, you’re starting to give off a wee bit of an incel vibe.

But anyways:

This isn’t a matter you can logically litigate. Human emotion is simply not a clean, cut-and-dried domain.

My further advice to you would be to focus on human connection first. Writ large, treat dating and romance as a side quest, not a primary quest. Focus on befriending people, and deepening interpersonal connection before anything else.

I don’t know what the nuance of the situation is, of course, but it sounds like you may have the opportunity to rekindle a friendship, and then see if it goes anywhere as things evolve. If you push really hard on the romance angle, especially if this is a very out-of-the-blue thing for her, you’re very likely to squick her out and nuke any chance of friendship, let alone anything more than that. Treat her as a human, and a friend, and then see where things go.

Citing the encyclopedia to describe love is like reading a dictionary to find out what the color red is. You'll get a technically correct definition, but it doesn't necessarily help with practical understanding.

I like the way Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it:

When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curvëd point,—what bitter wrong Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented? Think! In mounting higher, The angels would press on us and aspire To drop some golden orb of perfect song Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay Rather on earth, Belovëd,—where the unfit Contrarious moods of men recoil away And isolate pure spirits, and permit A place to stand and love in for a day, With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

• Sonnets from the Portuguese XXII

You may have loved her, in the sense that you felt affection toward her and wanted good things for her. Good friends, I would argue, should love one another in that way.

But this need to "confess" your feelings, seemingly out of the blue, after a long time apart, is not indicative of simple friendly, platonic love. This sort of "puppy love," as we might refer to a youthful romantic interest or infatuation, is different from a true and lasting romantic love that grows from a mutual relationship.

Puppy love is not bad. It's a normal part of growing up and learning to navigate romantic feelings and relationships. I'll bet that most (if not all) of the people responding to you have experienced it, and as we have had more experiences with relationships and actually "falling in love" with other people, we have learned to tell the difference.

I can definitely point to a couple of long-term friends with whom I was infatuated as a teenager. I still feel a warm, platonic love for those people ... but after having actually fallen in love, I can definitively say I was never "in love" with those people. I certainly don't feel the need to reach out after years (decades, even) to tell them how I used to feel.

If you have not talked to this woman in years and she lives thousands of kilometers away, you have about a 1% chance of anything positive coming from your confession. If you're not familiar with the Dobler/Dahmer Theory, it's pretty simple. A grand romantic gesture will be well received if the recipient already finds the giver to be an acceptable potential romantic partner. If they don't think of the giver in that way, it just comes off as creepy.

You have said that this woman was not romantically interested in you while you were acquainted. So that tells me you have better than a 50% shot of ending up on the "Dahmer" end of the scale.

Channel your energy into something more productive. Maybe get out into your community and find some affinity groups (hiking, coding, discussion, gardening, whatever floats your boat) and find some people you can connect with in the present instead of dwelling on the past.

Good luck!

(Apologies for the link to the random blog, but it's the best source I found for explaining the phenomenon instead of just discussing the show where it originated. I heard about this theory years ago but I only learned today that it came from a sitcom.)

tips hat

Ackchually milady, the eshiclopedia brihtannika says you're wrong! Checkmate lib

laughs in incel

Romeo and Juliet never got to live as a couple. Were they not in love?

Dude, they weren't real. That was fiction, not a documentary.