I really, really like you.

I came up with several reasons why you should never explicitly confess your feelings for another.

1. If you are turned down, it's gonna be embarrassing. Among other feelings.

2. If you don't know the person well enough, the person's gonna get freaked out by a random confession of love.

3. If you know the person well enough, there's no need to explicitly make known your feelings because you two have probably been flirting outrageously all along. If you two have already established intimacy, what's the point in confessing?

6. By confessing FIRST, you are waving the white flag. You've lost in the game of playing hard-to-get. You don't want to lose. You want to stay in control. You want to keep the other person hanging. You want to retain power. Don't you?

7. If you manage to coerce him into confessing first, you can applaud yourself for your irresistable charm, because he evidently can't keep his raving obsession for you to himself.

4. Confessing your true feelings are like the climactic point of the relationship. A lot of tension and emotion goes into building yourself up to confess, and at the actual point of confession, you can heave a sigh of relief. But after that, you subject yourself to worry and agonising anticipation, as you contemplate the person's response. Not a nice feeling.

5. Post-confession, change has to occur, whether for good or for worse.Your object of affection has a few options: a)reciprocate, and then ideally you two end up together; b)reject, and then you'll end up feeling like shit, or c)ignore, and you two enter a state of undecided awkwardness because you don't know how the relationship stands as of that point in time onwards.

8. Isn't it better to keep things the way they are? Playful flirting or obsessive admiration? Your perfect image of that person will never be marred by the gruesome reality of that person's true nature in a relationship.

6. You don't have to go through that terrible bother of letting him know how you feel about him, or even if you really like him at all. Sounds strange, but it's relevant. Sometimes, people realise that they didn't really like someone after all, right after confessing. That's a slip-up you don't want to end up committing, because a lot of feelings are at stake. Just make up your mind not to let on how you truly feel; it saves the bother of deciding how you feel about him, to begin with.

9. In the event that he was just toying with your feelings, you have nothing to lose because by keeping your mouth shut, you didn't confer power unto him. So keep it that way. Try your best to convince yourself that you're toying with him too. It will eventually work. When you don't take either of your feelings seriously, nothing is at stake.

Do you know when's the best time to tell people that you like them?

1. When you've stopped liking them, and you need to get it off your chest. Ideally you two laugh over it together, and in the depths of your hearts wonder why either of you never made a move earlier, as things might've been quite different otherwise.

2. When one of you are on the brink of death, and you don't want to die with a laden conscience.

3. When you're immigrating to a far-off land, and the likelihood of you ever needing to see each other again is near zero. Then you'll eventually get over him and fall in love with some foreign dude.

4. A week or two after they've told you they like you. >=)