Lately in school we’ve been starting Romeo and Juliet, and my class had a discussion regarding love at first sight. Only one girl thought that it existed and wrote a poem, something along the lines of seeing a guy and knowing he was the right one; sounded like stalking to me.
You can’t determine whether or not a person is perfect for you just by looking at him/her, that’s just shallowness. And even if you start “observing that person’s behavior” (words from the girl), that becomes stalking.
So how about it? Does anyone believe in love at first sight?
You can’t love someone you don’t know. You can’t know someone just by seeing them for the first time. Unless you are incredibly shallow and their initial physical appearance is all you want or need to know.
So ‘love at first sight’ is a notion used to prop up the ‘only one person in the world you’re fated to be with’ whimsy. It’s a nice thought when you’re in love, but common sense tells you it’s nonsense.
I’m not talking about falling in love AFTER a week of knowing her and talking to her.
I’m talking about, you see a hot guy/girl, and you think BAM–that’s the one for me/it was meant to be/our destinies are intertwined/God sent her down from heaven/heaven’s missing an angel/whatever other fantasies you can think of.
I’m talking about love at FIRST SIGHT. NOT during a conversation, not after a conversation, not after a week of conversation. When you saw her for the very first time, did you say “she’s the one for me”, and if so, why? And “I had a feeling” doesn’t really count.
No. You have no idea who the person is at first sight; before you talk to them, for all you know he or she is a racist serial killer with the IQ of a bran muffin. You might want to sleep with them on first glance, but love…no way. Love at first sight is only realistic if we’re talking about puppies, fast computers and sports cars.
Some people say it is, and that’s about as good as we can do, I think. My personal answer is no. You can be attracted to someone that fast, but love requires knowing the person. There are people who meet and decide “that’s it” really quick, but they wouldn’t have stayed together if they’d turned out to be incompatible.
Well, I come down somewhere in the middle. I think you can tell a fair bit about a person pretty quickly…so I don’t think it is completely ridiculous to be quite interested in (and obviously physically attracted to) a person quickly…even basically at first sight.
But, to “know” that they are the right person for you is a bit extreme. I also think that people who claim there were in love at first sight might really be saying that they were immediately interested in and attracted to the person and since it has now actually worked out, they think of it in retrospect as love at first sight. However, if the object of their interest had turned out to be a jerk, they would have written it off as lust at first sight or some crazy infatuation.
So, I would call “love at first sight” some combination of lust, less purile interest in the person based on lots of cues (e.g., how they present and carry themselves, how they interact with others), and a little bit of rewriting (or at least selective writing) of history after-the-fact.
Seems to me that it’s entirely possible. That’s not to say that love at first sight=true love, or that someone whom you immediately fall for is the “one and only”, or even that a LAFS relationship will last–but since when has love been a guaranteed thing?
FWIW, I met my husband and knew the second I saw him that we’d end up together. I didn’t feel it, I KNEW it. I can still remember the way he looked, what both of us were wearing, the song that was playing, etc. It wasn’t even so much a physical attraction because he really wasn’t my “type”. Nevertheless, I called up my sister that night and told her I’d met the man I was going to marry and two years later we did get hitched. Sadly, it didn’t last and we’re now separated after six years–but that initial impression, that this man was going to play a huge part in my life and that I would love him like fire, certainly was true in its time.
I think the answers you’ll get will be very varied, depending on how each individual person defines love. And, while I know it’s not exactly along the same lines, I know of many many women–myself included–who fell in love with thier newborns at first sight.
I suppose it depends on how you define “love at first sight”. I’m sure that everyone has “false positives” when it comes to love at first sight - you see someone, you think it’s love, then you get to know them, and find you were wrong. But sometimes, just through sheer random chance, you get to know them, and it is love. That doesn’t mean you “knew” it, anymore than you “know” that a die roll is going to come up with your number. You made a guess, and you were right. And the way our minds work, we remember the correct guesses a lot better than the incorrect ones. Really, “When we met, we just knew we were right for each other” is a much better anecdote than “I thought she was the one, but she was a bitch, and had horrible body odor.”
There’s likely some validity to be found in the idea, though. We’re all looking for people that embody certain characteristics, and some of those characteristics can be conveyed through body language. If we want someone who’s fun and has a good sense of humor, then we’re likely going to have our interest piqued by someone whom we first see while they’re laughing. And first impressions can tell you a lot about a person. Not enough to fall in love, but enough to weed out some of the less lucrative prospects. Of course, even “first impressions” seem to go beyond what people usually mean when they speak of love at first sight - they usually refer to just seeing someone, not even talking to them, and “knowing” that they’ve found Mr(s). Right.
Not terribly romantic, of course. Sorry 'bout that.
Jeff
I’m not sure I believe in “love at first sight”. I do, however, believe in “‘Hmmmmm. . .’ at first sight”.
When I was in high school, I’d hang out in a gaming store a great deal. (Not computer games – board games, card games, wrought-iron remove-the-ring-from-the-horseshoes puzzle games, just about anything.) One day my family went out for ice cream (which was right next to the gaming store) and I wandered over to see what was happening.
It was a major night for a popular game among the kids and teenagers, and the place was packed; the gaming tables in the back were full, and there were people playing in the aisles. I looked around the room and didn’t see anyone I knew other than the proprietor to talk to, and he was ensconced in a game.
There were a couple of guys playing on the floor nearby, and one of them was . . . interesting. I wasn’t sure entirely why, but I wandered over and sat down next to them to see what was going on. The interesting one won the game, scooped up his cards and put them away, and said something along the lines of, “Now what deck shall I beat you with?”
I observed them for a while, and then went back for my ice cream. Hung out around the gaming store as per usual after school, and a couple weeks later the Interesting Guy came in. We may have played chess. He continued to be Interesting. A while later the proprietor referred to him by name, and thus I learned what to call him. And he continued Interesting.
To make a long story short, about six years later I married him.
I’m still trying to figure out what love is, exactly, having been more or less stuck on “…but I know it when I feel it” for the past couple of decades.
Supporting data: I’ve been seriously head-over heels, stupid-drunk in love with four women over the course of my life. With each one, it took at least a few weeks before whatever I felt for them could properly be described as ‘love’. I can’t imagine it taking less than one conversation, at least.
Oh, and I only ever had a relationship that was more than friendship with one of the four. 0.25 success ratio, is that good or bad?
Yes, been there done that, have the leather jacket.
Who’s SO doesn’t have a few faults? What if you fell in love with someone and only after 20yrs together, he/she told you about their serial killer past? Would you automatically stop loving that person?
I’ve come to the personal opinion that “love at first sight” is a combination of self-fulfilling prophecy and observational selection. And a little semantic looseness with the word ‘love’ doesn’t hurt, either. You can have ‘infatuation at first sight’ or ‘lust at first sight’, but neither of those sounds particularly romantic or pretty.
Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with pretty, unrealistic ideas, mind you… it’s just when people try to implement dreams without checking with reality first that such things can lead to trouble.
It never happened to me, but I wouldn’t deny the existance of love at first sight either.
[hijack]
grumble, grumble, everything’s stalking these days. I was accused of stalking when I was just being friendly and had no romantic interest in the person whatsoever. Seriously I am so fed up with all this “stalker” bs.
On a similar note, I saw “there is something about Marry” again, yesterday. Probably a lot of people agree that Ted was a stalker, but I am still of the opinion that it was true love.[/hijack]
Some columnist (I think it was Dan Savage) had what I think was the most accurate view of “love at first sight.”
“Love at first sight,” by itself, is impossible. To determine that you love someone, you have to get to know them for a while and come to that realization slowly.
However, “lust at first sight” is quite possible, perhaps even common. This initial lust, however, will eventually wear off in any relationship
What seems like “love at first sight” that develops into a long-term relationship is actually the two of them combined. The lovers initally fall into “lust at first sight” and before the lust wears off, they transition into love. It’s great when they can happen together, but it’s really a two stage process.
Absolutely, it exists. It’s happened to me personally, on three occasions.
One of the women became Mrs. FA
One of the women became The Girl Who Didn’t Work Out.
The third I fell OUT of love with the more I got to know her.
Love at first sight certainly happens; TRUE love, however, happens only through coming to know the person in question. It’s not a matter of occurrance, it’s a matter of depth.
