You’re on the metro minding your own business, when a stranger asks, “Is this seat taken?” You move over, barely look up, and say, “It’s all yours.”
Suddenly, you are painfully aware of the heat of her body. Her scent. Even her voice sounds like honey. You glance at her, and your world caves in. She’s not even “your type.” But in an instant, she’s everything you’ve ever wanted. The attraction is so powerful—emotionally, physically, and mentally—that you feel sick.
Years later, you tell your children that you knew the moment you saw her that she was The One.
In an alternate version of the story, you commiserate with your buddies at the bar. The whole thing blew up in disaster after a few insanely hot hook ups, and your heart was cut to smithereens, but still you can’t get her out of your mind.
Is Love at First Sight Real?
Well, as controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson might ask, it depends what you mean by “real.” It depends what you mean by “love.”
Many people report a powerful attraction of mind, body, and soul on a first encounter.
It is exceedingly common and universal, across time and across cultures, for people to report the experience of this overwhelming feeling of love at first sight.
What’s rare is that no one feels it towards everyone they are attracted to. You will feel a powerful desire to have sex with many women, or numerous crushes of every kind, but this level of longing happens only once or occasionally.
It’s more than sex.
Chemistry and lust are definitely driving the experience, but then again, you get hard-ons all day every day, and this goes way beyond that.
The intense feeling at first encounter doesn’t determine the outcome of the relationship.
Millions of couples who weren’t attracted to each other at all, or started out as friends, or got to know each other slowly might describe their partner as the love of their life. And millions who fell hard at first sight feel like it was a delusion, or a danger to their life or sanity in some way.
The intensity of the first encounter suggests nothing of the relationship ahead or how strong or healthy it will be.
Love at first sight is usually unrequited.
Most of the time, this powerful attraction is one sided. When a man (or woman) can’t accept that the feelings are not returned, things go haywire fast. There is sometimes obsession, madness, stalking, even murder, and a world of movies and literature.
Usually, people eventually “come down” from the high and the heartbreak, and accept that we all experience mismatched feelings.
The sex is insane, but the risk is real.
When you feel this level of attraction, a simple kiss can be more intense than a weekend long orgy with other lovers.
In other cases, we might act unreasonably, and might have an affair that hurts our family, or act out towards our love object when she doesn’t behave the way we want her to.
The stakes are higher when we are in this state of mind and body. Everything feels bigger, including the fallout.
There’s a thin line between love and hate.
We might spend our life with the person we experience love at first sight with—it happens!
Sometimes, the feeling changes completely around, and we feel disgust and hatred on a level just as intense. More often than not, it dissipates completely. We feel neutral and wonder “what was I thinking?”
What are your thoughts on love at first sight? Please leave a comment!
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