>It seems like in the "old days", it was girls who talked about "commitment" and scared off guys who wanted to be "free & loose", and these days it seems like the opposite's true, more & more, where guys want love, while the girl gets scared of being "tied down" should we speak about our feelings or actually vocalize our being in love with them...

As a girl, I still look for commitment, but I need to know that the relationship is going to be stable in the long run before I commit. This means that I need to know that I can commit to being with someone for the rest of my life before I'll become physically intimate with someone. I'll say "I love you" before that, as I believe that love is something that can be shared between friends as well as lovers, but I need that final assurance of commitment from the other party before we consummate that love.

Guys seem to rush things a lot of the time, and that does scare a lot of girls off. A lot of us can't tell if he's rushing into the "love" word because he honestly loves us or he's just trying to get into our pants. That's why an early level of commitment can be scary to us. We don't want our feelings to be betrayed, so we have to be wary of someone who seems to be rushing things.

That said, everyone needs a relationship to move at a different pace... One part of keeping a relationship up is synchronizing the timing between two people. If it doesn't work out because of this, maybe it's not meant to be.