So, is this true, or not? How hard did you fall when you first met your SO? Did you feel the attraction at first sight, or did he/she take awhile to grow on you? Note the two separate sections for males and females (gay dopers should vote on the basis of their sex). For those not in a relationship right now, vote based on your last one (or your most important one)-should get a larger sample that way, even tho the poll is just the icing on the cake anyway.
I rarely feel attraction at first sight. And when I have, there was nothing about their looks that carried over to my falling in first sight again with someone else who might look just like him. That is to say, a picture would never do it. I have to be in the same room with someone, or have SOME kind of interaction, to feel anything. So, it has never been about looks. I have, however, had interaction without sight that ended up in marriage, so I might just be weird. 
This is partly why I get annoyed about the jokes guys have about being ‘in the friend zone’. Don’t you GET it, that being in The Friend Zone is not only a lot better than not being in any zone, but that The Friend Zone is quite diaphanous, and people wander in and out of it all the time. It’s a foot in the door, man!
All of my relationships were different in this respect, so I’ll just go with my last one, which was also the best one.
It wasn’t quite love at first sight, but it was extreme infatuation by about 20 minutes into the first date. And it wasn’t her looks (though I think she’s beautiful), it was the energy that we had together.
It became love on date 2. We admitted it to each other on date 4.
Best year of my life.
I’ve only fallen in love with one person. I fell for her bigtime upon meeting her- 1st day of college, freshman year. I couldn’t get her out of my mind but we were both pretty shy and acted aloof for a while. At one point that semester I decided I was going to find a reason to stop by her dorm, and when I got there I called her room from the lobby phone. I didn’t know what I was going to say to her. I called, and it started ringing, and it rang about 20 times before I gave up and decided she wasn’t going to pick up. As I was hanging up, the elevator doors opened in front of me and she walked out, saw me and her face lit up. BAM!! That was it- I was head over heels in love. Finally I sacked up and made my feelings clear, and fortunately she shared them. We’re now in our mid-40’s and have never been happier.
It was on our third date, which was ten days after we first met. I’d liked him a whole lot up till then, but I finally fell on date 3.
I was attracted to him from the get-go, though. I can still see him walking down that sidewalk, tall and broad and tan and handsome. Goodness.
I’d like some clarity on whether the poll is asking about how quickly we fell for our SOs, or whether we found them immediately attractive. When I first became aware of my husband (we’d worked in the same place for a couple of months but never really interacted), I wanted to bone him but had no desire for a relationship. A couple of dates later, I knew I wanted to marry him. So it wasn’t love at first sight, but it was definitely lust/ attraction at first sight.
I’m no longer in a committed relationship, but I was. I liked him a lot at first sight. Not that he was all that good-looking, but he had kind of a laid-back jolly buddha pothead vibe, which I find very attractive in a guy. I actually “fell” in love with him when we were playing Rock Band at his friend’s house a couple months later. He had the singing voice of an angel. :3 He’s my ex now, and good riddance on almost all fronts… but I’ll cop to missing the sound of his singing voice.
I knew my boyfriend for years before we got together and never found him particularly attractive. There were good reasons for that, though; most of that time I was in love with someone else, and he is years younger than me and was just a kid then. However, once I began to entertain the thought, the first time we spent time one-on-one, I was very attracted; and it really only took a couple weeks for me to know he was special. I would hesitate to use the word LOVE at that stage, though, no matter how much I liked him and what I saw happening in the future.
He had a big thing for me since the first time he saw me.
I screwed up my vote. I wanted to hook up with my fiancee the first night I saw her but I had a buddy talk me out of it. We ended up friends for a while and then didn’t talk for a while. Once we got back together we started dateing and it took me 3-4 months to fall in love.
I voted that it took awhile when it was lust at first sight.
Picture it: Ann Arbor, 2001, first day of college freshman orientation. I barely noticed him. He was a nerdy guy who only ever talked about two things: a) running, and b) the X-men. Turns out he was in the same hippie learning commune as I was, also studying Spanish. We carried on an aquaintanceship for about a year - saw him in the halls and hanging out in the lounge and that sort of thing. I thought he was nice but dorky.
Late into freshman year, we started talking more regularly… and we couldn’t stop talking. The first thing I noticed is how incredibly good he was to people - not just me, but to everyone. We quickly became best friends, and we became closer to one another than we had ever been with anyone else before. I began to think about how much I loved having him in my life, and being the most important person to him. I didn’t think I had romantic feelings for him, but I kept thinking “What happens when he finds a partner?” I knew it would cause our relationship to change. And I didn’t want it to change. In fact, the more I thought about him becoming closer to some other woman, the more I got the feeling I was going to have to cut a bitch.
It was about 1 year after we met that it finally hit me. When it hit, it hit hard. I mean sleepless nights, nausea, the inability to think of anything else… falling in love is torture, in a way. I was absolutely terrified to tell him how I felt because how I felt is that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. It’s a lot to process at 19 years old. I had fully believed I was going to be finished with graduate school before I got into anything serious.
Anyway, because I’m impatient and don’t like wasting my time on men who aren’t interested, I told him that I was falling in love with him. I told him in an e-mail actually - at the time it was our primary means of communication because he was home for the summer. By some miraculous stroke of luck, he was in love with me too. It was one of those things where everybody knew we were in love before we did.
So that was the beginning. He was every bit as serious as I was, right from the very start. We knew we were probably going to spend the rest of our lives together. Three years later, we got engaged, and a year after that - 2006 - we got married.
We recently celebrated 10 years together and 6 years of marriage. Since then it’s been drama after drama after drama - work and grad school and family problems and moving to another state and death and work and moving again and grad school and endless grad school (I completed my Masters; he’s in a Ph.D. program.) He still only talks about two things: a) psychology and b) The X-Men. The difference is now I read his X-Men comics and geek out right along with him.
I got to tell you, that heady feeling that comes with being in love, it never went away. I mean I don’t lose sleep over it anymore (usually), but when I look at him I still get the butterflies. He is the great miracle of my life.
I fell in love with my wife long before I met her (IRL). We met on-line and fell in love months before we finally met. I’ve found her irresistibly attractive and a lust-object since we first started trading electrons.
It was being hit like a truck—WHAM! That was over 20 years ago and my belief that we are soulmates has never wavered, even though technically I don’t believe in souls :D.
It took a couple of months, but it didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks.
Like being struck by lightening. And all I could see were his eyes because he was wearing a wig and beard. I knew I had to say something, anything. I mumbled something about the play he was in and how I had always wanted to play the guitar. It’s been eleven years and my guitar playing still sucks. We had better things to do 
I found him attractive right away, but the love didn’t come (and is probably still growing) until at least a month in.
Wha happened?
I know that I could have added more options; I’ll just let everyone decide on their own what I meant by “first sight”-I don’t personally believe in love at first sight, per se, but recognition/attraction/magnetism can certainly happen. The first person I did fall for felt very familiar (and yes also attractive) to me the instant I first saw her, so I would have voted for the first option.
I have been in two serious relationships, and both times I was immediately attracted to the guy the minute I saw him.
With my current boyfriend, I spotted him at a faculty dinner (we both worked at the same academy in Seoul) and was like, wow, a tall, broad shouldered, handsome Irish guy! How could anyone resist THAT? And then I got to talking to him and he had the most wonderful sense of humor, and we could talk for hours about anything without getting bored even though our interests were completely different (he’s into motorbikes, I’m into fantasy novels).
I think if you asked him, he’d say he didn’t fall for me until about the third time we hung out. That was at a co-worker’s birthday party - I’d just cut my hair and was wearing something sexier than usual that night, and that same night he put the moves on me.
“He is the great miracle of my life.” Wow. That’s beautiful.
It took me a while (c. 1-6 months), but it didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks. I just gradually became more and more aware that my life is better when she is with me. To the point where, eventually, I realised that she is the best thing in my life, bar nothing.
The long term ex, when he puked on my shoes.
We met in the Full Moon Saloon, he told me he was from Nawlins and his friends had left him and could I take him home with me because he didn’t know how to get home. He was so cute, and so pathetic and so drunk. He couldn’t see more than 2 feet in front of his face so I figured I’d be safe as long as I stayed outside his field of vision. He puked on my shoes as we walked to the car. I took him home and put him to bed. Little Liar! He was from Baltimore, he had just come home from living in New Orleans. He knew exactly where he was and how to get home. Wasn’t exactly love at first sight but we were an item from that day on.
We were together for over 7 years.
Current guy.
We met online on an adult hookup site. We chatted online, started talking but the whole idea was to have some fun without and commitments. I stood him up a few times, not on purpose but well he was just a guy and I was working two jobs and tired and I’d fall asleep. Eventually we got together and I was like eh, he’s okay I guess. Got together again and nothing special. Just having fun. Got together the third time, looked in his eyes and wham! knocked on my ass in love. Shocked the crap out of me when he said he wasn’t seeing anybody but me and wanted me to stop seeing other men. He’s 15 years younger, very hot, races cars and has a lot of women who’d love to get him, and he wants me. We’ve been up and down and back and forth, but we always work through it and after 5+ years I’m still in love.