Fiction can only take you so far -- push it beyond, and it kinda sucks you inside out. But that is only one part of the equation.

The expression, "falling" in this instance, resonates with the tumble of misbehaving angels, the first condition that led to the establishment of Hell in Christian mythology. There is a similar abandonment of serenity -- the condition is usually described as highly energized -- and a similar sense, at least in the Puritan ethic, of abandoning a position of studied virtuosity, which I prefer to think of as an overwhelm of faith made real in human terms -- there is a sense of absolute trust and safety and uncriticality involved in what people usually describe as falling in love. The other, whether rightly or wrongly, is accepted with high trust.

The other reason why the term has acheived such popularity is the sense of a higher set of forces at work, things one cannot strategize against; when you take a serious fall physically there is always a frozen instant where your impulse is to do something about gravity, which you then just as instantaneously realize is not subject to management action! And in love as in gravity's well, there is a certain feeling that you have been taken up by a stream that cannot be brooked. The fact that it is really a river of your own energies, unleashed, the governor uncoupled, usually escapes one's attention!:>)

All around, growing in and into love is a much wiser approach, IMHO.

A