Maybe love is never appropriate?

I wonder sometimes about the idea of love. Most especially lately about the idea of falling in love with someone....inappropriate. (how I hate that word, even at the best of times I always feel like there's a sneer in that word)

It's been awhile since I've had a "special someone" in my life. And I have to say - the last person I loved, and was loved by, was beyond inappropriate. That relationship was ill-advised at the best of times and suicidal at the worst... but that's not what I'm thinking about now.

These days I crush easily; almost never pursue any of it and then, eventually through time or familiarity or new girlfriends, the crush dies. I don't really "put myself out there" very much. My deepest feelings these days are reserved for those friends who have become like family: daily fixtures who I adore and would hate to lose but who I would never think to think of "in that way" - because it would be inappropriate.

"You can't help who you fall in love with."

I used to believe this absolutely. That love was beyond your control - you love who you love and sometimes that's not very healthy and sometimes it works out beautifully. I'm not sure how I feel now. If you don't acknowledge a feeling, if you repress it and don't allow it to grow - does that mean you are preventing yourself from falling...? I wonder about people who fall in love with someone who is married, someone too old, or too young for them... someone "inappropriate". Could they help it? Did they want to? Do those people just throw caution to the wind and say "I love this person" and chase that dream to it's conclusion?

I think the words appropriate/inappropriate are far too intellectual to apply to my idea of love... I think I'm trying to follow that example and intellectualize something that is much more instinct, pheremones, illogical feelings... so many things that are not intellectual.

It's just been on my mind.

Because I am almost never "appropriate".