My brother claims that he married his wife because “half an hour after meeting her, he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her”. Does it count as love at first sight, or just lyrics for a bolero?
I fell in *lust *at first sight with my first boyfriend. Nothing unusual there. 
With my husband, it was completely different. When we met, we just instantly liked each other - but more than that, there was a sense of familiarity. From the first moment we met, we felt literally like we’d known each other for years.
It was the darnedest thing. I’m friendly-but-distant, and am very slow to make friends or trust people - but with hubby it was instant. (**Wham! You’re my friend! **) It was exactly the same for him, and he’s just as slow to warm to people as I am.
We’ve been together now for about nine years and even when we argue (which isn’t often, thankfully) we tend to move past it relatively fast because we’re more than husband and wife; we’re best friends.
You’ll never see ***Like *At First Sight promoted in romance novels, though.
Good story. And, by the way - I used to hang at Neo and met my future wife at Shelter, back in the day…
Did I ever!!
Soon as I clapped eyes on my late wife I knew she was the one for me
I’d just returned to college after 9 years away to get my Masters at age 30. I was walking across the parking lot, looked up and saw a girl walking away from me at the far end, about to enter my science building. Even though I couldn’t see her face, the strangest feeling came over me and I stopped dead in my tracks and thought to myself “My gosh, I’m going to marry that girl someday.”
In January, we’ll have our 10th anniversary.
2nd semester of my Sophomorer year of HS I walked into the newspaper production class and he was sitting on the editor’s desk. This moment defined my life for the next 5 years. I had never chased a boy before and I never did since, but from age 15 to 20 I hunted this boy, carefully, steadily, relentlessly and, in ways, victoriously. He never did love me as I loved him—how could he? I was obsessed. But some of my best teenaged/college memories are of him and I’m glad. After 2 years of the local JC, he went off the Berkeley and I met someone obsessed with me.
Yep, and it was the weirdest thing. I had been in love before as well as in lust. You know, that whole hormonal infatuation thing we go through, especially when we are young, inexperienced and want to devour everyone up.
But this was different. I accompanied a friend to a small birthday party of a mutual acquaintance. It was at a park and as we were walking up to the shelter house I see this girl, and I suddenly felt dizzy. She was talking to someone, and her face was slightly turned toward me. I remember thinking “We’ll be together some day” But then the other half of me thought “You’re crazy, you don’t know her, you just got out of a relationship two days ago, she’s too cute to be single.”
My friend introduced us and the feeling just got stronger. I do have to say though, at the time, she was too young for me, not to mention that I had just ended a relationship and needed to decompress for a while. The whole evening our eyes kept locking but I was too frozen to do anything. She started dating someone else and my ex and I got back together. Then she and her ex split and so did me and my ex. Then we tried to get together. Oops. Too soon for both of us. We didn’t speak for a few months but then licked our wounds and hung out as friends for a few months.
In the meantime, both of us wanted to be together but we were both too terrified to make a move. Finally our friends told us we were crazy because we clearly belonged together. Well duh.
We just celebrated our 3rd anniversary 2 weeks ago. I still think about that first day I saw her and I just can’t believe how time stopped and I somehow “knew” we would fall in love.
Me, too.
Halfway through the first piece of pizza the day we first met I knew he was the one for me.
Can’t explain it. Totally illogical. Weirded me out to no end - I’m a logical soul normally.
It didn’t go away.
We were married eleven months to the day after that first piece of pizza. Still married today.
However, I’ll state for the record, that while I occasionally enjoy a good romance novel (they’re hilarious sometimes, I swear to Og those writers come up with the most creative ways to say “penis”!), until I met my husband I was absolutely convinced, to the depths of my soul, that love at first sight was a literary convention - the deus ex machina of the Harlequin world.
I pontificated on a number of occasions on just that subject to my friends.
You should have heard them laugh when I came clean about what happened to me.
In the interest of fairness, however, I’ll point out that my best friend had a similar experience - remet a guy she’d known when they were kids and immediately thought “this is the one for me”. They, too, married - but it didn’t work out so well. The marriage was never very sound and fell apart after five years.
When I was a young pup, was always falling “in lust” as some have termed it. Early on, I realized that most often, the sexiest women to which I was attracted were either stupid, self-centered, ignorant, uninteresting, or all of the above.
I began to be a bit more discriminating, and realized that for me, I had to have more than a physical attraction for a satisfactory relationship.
So time passed and at 24, I was in Japan during the Korean War. At the army hospital where I worked, I met a young Japanese lady (hell, at 22 she was a “girl” to me). Very pretty and charming, but no bells or whistles sounded. We talked often, but wisely, she never went out with GIs. Fortunately, a buddy of mine was going out with her best friend, so after a lot of persuasion on all our parts, we got her to go out with me on double dates.
I found she was very well educated (as most Japanese are), had a great interest in and appreciation for art and literature, and we had many of the same interests, despite the huge cultural difference.
After a while she decided I was relatively harmless and agreed to go out on dates with me alone. This took some courage, as in her family and circle of friends, it was a bit disgraceful to be seen with any GI, but we visited museums and art galleries, many shrines and temples and their gardens, ate in restaurants not usually frequented by army personal, etc.
Back then I was convinced that I would never get married, as my parents were divorced when I was very young, and actually I had never, ever seen what could be termed a happy marriage.
Then, however, as I lay on my bunk at nights, I began to realize that when I got shipped back stateside, I really did not want to leave without her. So, we decided to get married.
The army made it exceedingly difficult to marry an “indigenous person” as they termed the Japanese, so had to get permission from the Supreme Commander of the Occupation Forces. That was Gen. MacArthur when I started and Gen Ridgeway by the time I finished the process. In my application were 104 pieces of paper, and even with a jeep driver and an interpreter at my disposal, it took me six months. When I finally got the permission, we went from Kyoto down to the American Embassy at Kobe.
We were married by a Vice Counsel of the United States. After checking the paperwork, he told us to raise our right hands, and swear to the truth of all the information in the application. Then he said, “OK.” I asked, “OK, what?” He replied that we were now married. Quite an anticlimax, eh?
So, we had another ceremony with the Army chaplain and then her family threw a huge wedding, so actually, we were married three times.
Perhaps that is why it has lasted 55 years.
A “ride” in a public library?! Or do you mean something metaphorical?
Personally, I don’t believe in Love at First Sight (LoFS); I believe in Lust at First Sight (LaFS) and I believe many people confuse the two. I’ve had too many friends recount this story to me (sorry to pick on your story WordMan), only to let anywhere from 3 weeks to 5 years make them realize they were wrong; two of those friends went through this multiple times.
I believe that when one experiences LuFS and it works out, it can be rewritten internally into LoFS. When two people share an attraction, they are more inclined to accentuate the positive things the couple feel, and to work around the differences. Also, those who confuse LuFS and LoFS I think either forget the LuFSs that didn’t work, or are lucky enough that their first LuFS worked.
Just one clarification: When I say LuFS, I don’t mean simply anyone you wish to sleep with. Sometimes, there is a combination of bearing, dress, environment, etc. that takes the simple, common lust to a new threshhold. For all I know, it could be a pairing of pherohormones that attract two people together who are predisposed to like each other. That’s what I’m talking about. However, love, IMNSHO, is something that builds over time.