On the subject of love letters

[Riddil]

Hrm, ok, first a quick back-story to set the stage...

Met a girl abroad, decided to give it a go, went well, blossomed nicely, logged a lot of frequent flyer miles, and now I'm currently pursuing getting a new position in her home city, at which point we plan on giving "the next level" a shot. Looking forward to it.

But... the thing that sets me off a bit is the "love letters". Don't get me wrong, she's not psycho, or spamming my inbox with them or anything, but occassionally she will send a very sweet, well-voiced love letter.

I'm not sure how to respond. I'm free enough with my emotions that I can express my sentiment openly. But I don't really need a full letter to express the length and breadth of my emotion. The truth is I feel like a cheese-ball when I write a long love letter. It feels so... plastic. I can say directly how I feel, or I can spend 4 paragraphs talking about the moon and flowers and all that jazz.

I appreciate her love letters, I just don't know how to respond. What's the etiquette here? Should I respond back with a gushing letter of my own? Or simply acknowledge her sentiment? And that brings up another set of disturbing questions...

If I respond with a long gushy love letter that I'm simply doing because I feel "it's appropriate", doesn't that just cheapen the whole thing? But what if I *don't* respond in kind, will that send off warning signals that maybe I just don't care enough?

Ah, the fickle female. A difficult beast to understand.