There is an incredibly amazing guy in my life right now, and he's asked me to be his girlfriend. Every instinct I have is telling me to say yes, because, quite honestly, when I see him, I light up. Even getting to see him for only a few minutes brightens my day. And we get along so fantastically well, which is what brought us together in the first place.

This is the same guy whose look of awe and stunned admiration when I came out of the fitting room in that amazing dress clued me in as to how he felt about me, the same one who's told me that - at a time when I was joking about needing a back-up guy - that he'd always be there when I need him, and that there'd be no expiry nor specific exercise date to that particular call option, the one who told me that he loves me and that I'm the most beautiful girl in the world, who sent me sunflowers on Tuesday because he figured, regardless of how the results went, they would either cheer me up or commerate an already awesome occasion.

This is also the guy who, when I confessed what was holding me back, that I felt falling in love was like throwing oneself off a cliff, and that a relationship was only enjoyable while you were in free fall and could come close to killing you once you hit the ground, told me, firstly, not to think of it as a cliff, and secondly, even if it was, he'd catch me.

And yet, I haven't said yes. There's something stopping me, just this fear that if I say yes, I'm opening the door to getting really hurt. I think it's something residual from my past relationships, the ones which took me such a long time to get over that I'm really just not willing to have to go through all of that again, especially because, face it, at my age, being committed to someone who turns out to be wrong for you represents a big opportunity cost.

"I think you should stop thinking about how you feel when I'm not there, and more about how you feel when I'm here," he told me last week, after I asked for some time apart so that I could think about this more rationally. And truth be told, my heart explodes a little with happiness when he's around.

My thinking time starts from tonight. I really hope I can come to some sort of decision soon, because I know one thing for sure. I don't want our relationship to go back to being platonic.