I think this whole "How does Buffy express emotion vs. how does she express pain" debate is becoming threadworthy and sort of tangential to the point of this thread. We're spending more time arguing Buffy's common emotional and physical reactions to pain than we are spending arguing about whether or not she eventually grew to love Spike.
As I've already stated, I think she did. I'm not even sure it matters whether she grew to love him in a romantic way or not. I mean, given how she believed in him and helped him in season 7 and then told him she loved him, it's hard to argue that she didn't love him at all, even if you do draw a line between romantic love and other kinds of love. The type of love, though, is less important than the fact that love came about at all. The point is that they loved each other in *any* capacity and that due to that unlikely and oftentimes unhealthy love, they grew and became better, stronger people. It's really beautiful. Whether you like Spuffy or not, I don't know how you can dismiss it. The love that they shared -- whether romantic or not -- gave each other the strength to meet their respective potentials in the end. Spike became a hero. The world opened itself up to Buffy, *Buffy,* who always felt burdened and often was/felt dead. Neither of them would have reached that point without the influence of the other in their lives.
I root for a Bander end game, myself, but I can see how important the Spike/Buffy connection was to the development of those two characters. Given how powerfully and, in the end, how positively it changed them both, I find it short sighted to dismiss it as being something less than love. Their love doesn't mean that they have to end up together. It doesn't have to threaten the potential or the meaning of your favorite relationship. It just means that they loved and helped each other when it counted and that they both turned out better for it.
