3 steps from attraction to love

There are 3 steps that occur between meeting someone and falling in love:

Attraction
Friendship
Love

For love to occur, there first needs to be periods of attraction and friendship.

Attraction

The first time you meet someone, you will decide if you are attracted to them or not. It does not matter how you meet them or over what medium, you will still make a decision.

This instant decision of attraction is based on your own subconscious criteria but is also influenced by the medium.

Meeting in person: If you meet someone face to face, you will size them up visually. Through a series of glances, you will assess their physical attributes first.
Meeting over the phone: The main characteristic of a person that you assess over the phone is the voice. The pitch, accent, timbre, speed and choice of words are some of the characteristics that you will take notice of.
Meeting of the Internet: The net does not give any physical characteristics for you to base a decision of attraction on, except maybe a photo or two. If there is a photo, you will take notice of it and attempt to assess the persons physical attributes. You also will take notice of what words a person uses and how funny they are before attraction can occur.

If you can not see a person, you will tend to take much more time to size a person up and decide if you are attracted or not. This will occur over the long term and you run the risk of loosing their attention.

Friendship

The second step of the road to love is friendship. There are three properties your relationship needs to have before you have form a friendship.

Fun: You and the person you have become attracted to need to be able to have fun together. This does not mean you have to have met in person.
Something in common: To keep the conversations going you need something in common. There needs to be something that you and the person you are attracted to can talk about without getting bored.
Trust: Trust is the big ticket item that is required for any friendship. Without it, there can not be any friendship.

Love

Love is really quite simple. It is just a strong stable relationship forged over sexual attraction. For love to occur, both you and the friend you are attracted to needs to have: