Love at first sight

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Really?

No, I think we can all agree this phenomenon doesn’t really happen. Right?

You meet a person. You like them. Their looks. That certain something.
A few dates, maybe a couple of overnights.
Okay. Something is there.

You’re not so sure. So you bide your time. Maybe they’ll say something.

It’s a month in. One day it finally hits you. You love this person.
Still you wait.

Six months and you both agree. It’s love. True love.
It’s spilling out your pores. You both feel it.

Then, at some point. You cohabitate, marry, whatever…
Yada, yada, yada.
What happens from there happens.

  1. Does Love at first sight really ever happen?
  2. Does friendship often lead to love?
  3. How familiar would that friendship need to be?

(I know very little of these things, any anecdotes/thoughts are welcome)

2

Love at first sight may not happen, but infatuation at first sight definitely does. I’ve experienced it.

3

Attraction, yes. But you never know at that point, if itvwill work.
I can’t imagine being friends with someone then liking them.

4

As with discussing God, or free will, or freedom, in discussions of love I think some initial definitions can help.

I think a lot of us (although not necessarily all of us) would distinguish between a case of the hots for someone and falling in love with them.

On the other hand, many of us (probably most of us, in here) would agree that chemistry, hormones, neurotransmitters responding to some biological imperatives do play a role in what we call “love”.

After all, I love my Dad, loved our kitty cat, I love my country (in a wry and critical and disappointed way, but still), I love myself, I love the other members of my species (some wry and critical stuff going on there too), I love saffron rice and the best of Pink Floyd and the color combo of prize-ribbon blue and rusty red… but we all know that when we’re speaking of falling in love it’s a different and distinct phenomenon than these other things.

And this one type of love is of sufficient importance that if someone asks about love without elaboration we assume it’s romantic love they’re talking about and not their love of nature or whatever. So it’s a big fucking deal for us.

Love of this sort is not the same as a fundamental assessment of another person that finds them to be an incredible and wonderful person with lots of great qualities. It’s not even the same as finding one’s own self to be in awe-filled and joyful appreciation of that wonderful person’s qualities. That can certainly coexist, but this latter kind of love really IS the kind that you can also feel for your child, your Aunt Ellen, or your best friend, and it isn’t romantic love.

So with all that being said (and to which you can of course dissent), no I don’t believe in love at first sight:

• It takes longer to learn enough about the other person and develop a sense of them;

• It also takes longer for your neurochemistry to react to the inputs of what interacting with this person feels like

• It’s neither an assessment of the other person’s overall goodness nor an evaluation of their visual (and other-sensory) hotness, but it involves both of those plus a bunch of other stuff, a cocktail of elements to be interpreted and reacted to, and it just doesn’t happen instantaneously.

5

Yes. I specifically meant romantic love.
I understand the other kinds of love, as much as you can understand why you like a certain shade of purple but definitely not lilac.

Like I said my understanding of romantic love is sparse. I’ll not get into why here, I’m looking for a sense of understanding kinda/sorta without the real machinery showing. I think.

I know there’s so much differential here.
I like to think I can parse out something I can use from anecdotal stories, if people feel safe expressing it.

6

I’ve had the amazingly good fortune to be in love multiple times in my life.

Most of the relationships ended with a lot of pain and having to detox (withdrawal symptoms from the chemistry of in-love-ness) on my part.

I’m an addict and once I realized I could survive the death-of-relationship and detox experience, I was willing to hop on again and again and hope for the best and ride it for all it was worth, unprotected and enthusiastic, each time until the crash.

I was amazingly lucky to eventually pair with a person who rode it down with me and never ran from the intensity and stayed on throughout. We’re both poly, which I think helps when the sparkles eventually die down. She knows I won’t ditch her to be with someone else; I know she won’t ditch me for similar reasons. We take care of each other and love each other but it has changed, admittedly, it doesn’t have the intensity it had during our first decade.

Back to the original question, no, it wasn’t love at first sight, or even love at first date. But our first date went warmly enough that I got really upset when I nearly screwed up our second date, miscalculating when I needed to leave the apartment to meet up with her as planned. (We met late, gave up on the idea of going to what we’d planned on going to, and had a good meal with good conversation instead).

In all my previous relationships going back to 8th grade it took awhile for me to acknowledge the specialness of the connection. This despite me being a very very alienated isolated person who didn’t have a lot of connections to sort through. But also a lot of toxic hostile connections where people had surreptitious motives of humiliating me for the sake of entertaining their friends, so that was probably a factor.

7

I think love at first sight can most definitely happen. Two people can in fact click instantly or near-instantly.

I’d say it also happens more frequently than often figured.

8

It’s happened to me three times.

It was, as you describe, an instant ‘click’. Within an hour I knew not only that we were going to end up together, but also that it’d be for a committed, long-term relationship. And that’s exactly what happened every single time.

True, all of these relationships failed. It doesn’t change the fact that what we felt when we met was instant mutual attraction, physical, emotional and intellectual. A flow, both mysterious and obvious, much deeper than mere infatuation or lust. Impossible to explain, yet crystal clear.

It was just us, immediately.

When I think of my ex for example, I know with absolute certainty that breaking up was the right thing to do. Yet, when I think of the day we first met, almost 5 years ago, I still get that visceral, butterflies in the stomach feeling I got then.

9

Sofia Vergara :heart_eyes:

Sofía Vergara (imdb.com)

10

Did for me. My wife and I knew each other for better than 10 years, would see each other at dog shows, hunt tests, field trials. We lived about 4 hours (on a good traffic day) apart, and she was married. Then all of a sudden one weekend at a fall trial, it all fell into place, and we’ve been married 17 years now.

11

Oooooh, love is my favorite subject!

I think sometimes people connect/click right away and rush into a relationship and sometimes it doesn’t work out and sometimes it does. But anyone who gets married within months of meeting someone, no matter how well you connect, is taking a big gamble. There will always be anecdotal tales of love at first sight that led to 50+ year marriages and I think those people got very lucky.

My anecdote is the “friendship turning to love” anecdote. I first met my husband at freshman orientation of the university we were attending. I thought he seemed like a nice guy but didn’t have much thought beyond that. By the time we moved into the same dorm, I thought he was kinda weird, like maybe a bit creepy. He did not have a good concept of personal space. Fortunately, I told someone about that and they told him. Next thing I know I’m getting a sincere, lovely, sweet, apologetic email and overture for friendship (I’m leaving some stuff out but it’s a long story.)

Then we became friends. And very quickly progressed to being best friends. I found I could talk to him about anything. I told him all about my history, my mental issues, and he wasn’t freaked out by them, he was impressed with how I was holding up under it all. We developed a genuine admiration for each other. Everyone thought we were going to get together, but we were sort of in this state of not really knowing what was going on. We were the last ones to know we were in love.

So we finally got together at age 19, the details are messy and complicated, but we made it. We were serious about one another right from the beginning, but we talked extensively about what we actually wanted out of life, practically and logistically. We had a lot in common in terms of shared goals and interests and the sort of lifestyle we wanted and how many kids and how labor would be shared etc. Yet we still didn’t get married until we were 23 years old.

And we are now 41. We are an example of what can grow out of a deep and sustaining friendship. I admit it took me a minute to think of him that way once I had already been thinking of him as a friend, but I remembered imagining what would happen when he got a girlfriend. That’s how I figured out my feelings. I imagined him having another woman and how she would have to be #1 in his life and I realized we wouldn’t be as close any more and the thought was just unbearable. And that’s how I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. Not because of how he looked or some crazy chemistry but because he was my best friend and I never wanted that to change.

I’ve always called him the first Great Miracle of my life, the one who made it seem possible that I wasn’t cursed to always suffer. And that relationship of course led to the second Great Miracle, who is our son.

So that’s my n of 1.

12

Here’s my story: I’m madly in love with a guy I used to work with many, many years ago. I always thought he was a great guy, and respected him as a colleague. We were both married at the time, and went on to have our careers, and raise our kids. And even when we both moved on to different jobs, we still saw each other at industry functions, and would catch up on what we’d been up to since the last time we saw each other.

Many years later, we were both single, and he asked me out. I was too dense to realize that he was asking me out and figured it was just old friends getting together to catch up on old times. I was wrong!

That date led to more dates, and he officially became Un-Friend-Zoned. That was over two years ago, and we have been deliriously happy together since then. I think he’s a keeper!

So yeah, maybe not often, but friendship is not a bad place to start!

13

I suppose my ‘anecdatum’ counts as ‘love at first sight’. I (a pointless 33 year-old drunkard) bumped into my love-to-be (27 year-old occasional drinker) in a vodka bar - she was so fantastically beautiful to me, such an unrealistic prospect that I felt no pressure in talking to her, as it was never going to happen. So we talked for hours about evolution among other things (I was quite stoned, can’t recall) and within two weeks were declaring our love for each other.

We’ve been together for 14 years now, married for 9, and I fall in love with her again at every sight. Neither of us believe in ‘soul mates’ and acknowledge things could have gone differently if we hadn’t met; though ironically that mutual disbelief makes me feel quite soul-matey towards her.

14

Happened once. Twentyish years ago I went to a friend’s bar to hear a band. (I’m looking at you, Corey Harris!) was standing at one end of the bar and saw a woman halfway down the bar who really took my breath away.

I nodded for the bartender and asked what she was drinking. Stoli & Tonic. I asked the bartender to pour her next one on me. A stool opened up next to her so I walked over. She thanked me for the drink and we talked about the musician who was playing later. We were both big fans.

She asked where I lived and I told her the general location. “Me too!” I told her a bit more specifically. “Me too!” Finally I told her the exact road and she got a bit nervous. We had both driven about 45 minutes, but lived a three minute walk from each other.

Her husband had recently moved out and their divorce was still in the process. She was a bit overwhelmed and hesitant to move quickly, but for me it was love at first sight.

15

Back before on-line dating apps I read the relationship ads in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis alt newspaper). In about a year there was just one ad that seemed promising. It led to a phone call, which for me was memorable only in that I’d decided not to worry about long conversational pauses.

On the first date she didn’t appear to be exactly my type, but within 45 minutes (chatting and driving) we were both giddy and knew we would be a couple. I’m still not sure she’s exactly my type, but we’ve been married 33 years.

16

I agree. I might compromise and go with “infatuation”, but love? Nope.

Speaking of infatuation and being shot down immediately! I absolutely loved this:

The Quick and the Dead - 1995

17

I mean, I’ve been completely smitten by somebody at first sight twice in my life that I could think of (my first long-term girlfriend, and then a college girlfriend) and both blossomed rather quickly into something that I would call “love.” That’s good enough for me to call it “love at first sight.”

18

Aww. I knew yours was a nice story. I love that.
Put a ring on that thang!!

I’m loving the fact love at first sight is, indeed, a thing.
Does my heart good :heart:

19

I was immediately attracted to my wife the first time I saw her. A few days later I had the chance to meet her under what could be called a cute meeting. Less than a month later I was hopelessly in love. That was fifty two years ago.

20

Sort of met my husband at a group event (300 people) in February, but we didn’t really talk. He did chat with a guy from my college, who invited him to visit my college for a smaller group event (25-30 people). We got properly introduced, started talking and haven’t stopped yet. That was 35 years ago.