love, theoretically

Lately I've been thinking a lot about love. I will admit, some of this has been spawned by the vampire romance books; I mentioned love nostalgia the last time I wrote about them, but really it's something that's been on my mind for a while.
To be clear: I am pretty happy being single, at least for now. In fact, I think that the mere fact that this subject has been preoccupying me is reason enough to stay completely single for a bit longer. I feel almost like dating would be dangerous. Because... Okay. It's not to say that I don't miss T, because I do. But in many ways, the reasons that we broke up have made that part of things a little easier than I'd like to admit. And also, after a certain amount of time that type of missing is obviously going to start to fade away as I begin to move on and re-form my life in, if you will, my own image. That makes sense, and that's essentially how it's been playing out. Anyway, as much as I miss her sometimes, I'm increasingly aware that I also miss plain old love, and that doesn't seem to be fading away. I am nostalgic about it, for gross mushy stuff like the way it feels to kiss and be kissed, for the joy of seeing somebody I love romantically and the way it makes me feel all sparkly, for those first few months when I'm sure everybody on the bus with me knows I'm just sitting there thinking about sex. But I want to fall in love the next time because I meet somebody excellent, not because I want to feel sparkly. What I worry about is that the desire for those things, the longing that intellectually has just more to do with me myself than with the person who helps me feel them, will influence my actions and make it harder for me to retain my clarity and my single-ness. Which is what I want, really. I swear.
I'm frequently in the position in my life where I feel like I can see and analyze what I'm thinking fairly clearly, but it's a source of eternal frustration to me that it doesn't necessarily do me any good. I can see the love nostalgia nesting in my brain and I know that's why, for instance, I'm reading a vampire romance novel and giggling (yes, nostalgically) at the cheesy, cheesy dialogue. It also means that I recognize that partly this is desire for external validation (which is something that happens but which I would rather not have as my driving force for so many actions) and partly it's a desire for safety and partly it's hormones and on and on. But that doesn't mean I can make it go away. And until it does, I'm somewhat hesitant to try my hand at even casual dating, despite the fact that I feel otherwise pretty together and fairly capable of not moving in with somebody in the next two weeks. Perhaps I'm just over-thinking? It's been known to happen.