Falling in love with someone before they've fallen for you is strangely similar to those occasions in school where you crack a maths problem before those around you have had a chance to figure it out. You bounce up and down on your seat in class, splitting at the seams with the urge to make it known that you know. Your heart aches to share the answer with your best friend, but conventional wisdom dictates that you give him a chance to arrive at the solution himself, so you wait with a maddening patience, doing no more than dropping a hint here and there.
Or you blurt out the answer and see him walk away in a huff, annoyed that you snatched from him the opportunity to learn. You keep your peace but lose your friend.
Or while he takes his time identifying and understanding and thinking about the problem, you review and check and double-check your solution. Hit by worries that you were mistaken after all, that you didn't think it through, or that you missed edge cases in your eagerness to arrive at an answer.