Love at First Sight

Published by

Clarissa

January 1, 2016

Reader Crystallizing Chaos asks a crucial question: is there such a thing as love at first sight?

The answer is that there is nothing but love at first sight. Sexually and psychologically healthy people know if they are attracted or not immediately. Of course, there are cultures where this powerful instinctive pull towards a person is stigmatized as “not really love.” People only allow themselves to name their feelings “love” if the feelings pass the muster of being socially acceptable.

The belief that sex is dirty and robs people of their full humanity by making them “like animals” generates the tortured distinctions between “in lust but not in love but not love.” The easier a culture finds it to name the powerful initial attraction “love”, the more sexually healthy it is. The longer people feel they need to wait until their feelings will qualify for the name of “love” and the more ritualized the process of renaming “lust” into “love” is, the weaker is their capacity to defend their personal space from the colonization by the social mandate.

People who can’t accept first – sight attraction as love because it’s “just sex” will be comforted by knowing that it really isn’t. Our brain processes information a lot faster than we can verbalize it. Within the very first few minutes of an encounter (but a real encounter, not an on-screen one), we know on a non-verbal level whether this person fits our relationship scenario. The need to bury this knowledge under a mountain of words and social codes betrays the desire to hand over the control over and responsibility for one’s personal life to the authority of one’s peer group.

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11 responses to “Love at First Sight”

Mike

January 2, 2016

I mostly agree with you.

When I was formerly of a more rationalist mindset, I probably would’ve disagreed. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that everyone nearly is necessarily driven by imperatives that are not accessible to conscious thought, and that many of our most important responses — as you point out — occur due to the brain processing many subtle and semi-consciously-perceived bits of information very quickly.

We take in more than we are consciously aware of, and then deny it because we see at as too animalistic and in the case of sexual attraction as too carnal. The truth is of course that we are corporeal beings — embodied always — and our consciousness is innately connected to that. Carnality is in our blood, is our blood.

Well, I’ll avoid going off on some tangent about AI reading I’ve been doing lately reference the above paragraph.

But to excurse in another direction, one of the reasons I find Sherlock’s inferences about people and places less absurd than most is that all he does it take all those bits of input that all of us to some extent or other perceive unconsciously and vaults them up to the level of conscious thought.

About love at first sight, I think it at least takes me hearing the person speak (and seeing them) — but it can take remarkably little speech to know for sure or not. Maybe a few seconds.

I think people end up in worse relationships and doomed ones from denying what their intuition is telling them.

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Spiderbaby

January 2, 2016

I don’t know, I happened to feel attracted to people at first sight only to discover that I didn’t like them on an emotional or intellectual level after I spoke to them. Love seems too strong a word for physical attraction without deeper knowledge.

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1. Stille (@aperfectbalance)
  
  January 2, 2016
  
  So they passed the physical attraction stage described in the original post, but not the fits-your-relationship-scenario one.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    January 2, 2016
    
    There is usually a reason for this sort of conflict, especially if it occurs more than once.
    
    One of such reason might be, for instance, that the person in question doesn’t want to be in any relationship at this point. But socially people who are not with anybody and not trying to be with anybody might be frowned upon. So s/he begins to enact the scenario of “I’m looking so hard but just not managing to meet anybody worthwhile.”
    
    Another possibility is that the person is enacting the parental scenario of “Nobody is good enough for my little princess / prince” which is used to tie the child forever to the parent who is terrified of loneliness.
    
    And there are many other possibilities. If physical attraction is consistently disjointed from the emotional / intellectual / relational attraction, there is always a reason for that.
    
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    1. ladyfiaran
      
      January 2, 2016
      
      The first scenario is me, I’m happily single and not looking for anyone, but I’ve never felt love at first sight. I don’t want to be in a relationship because my mother and her second husband had a turbulent relationship and many of my cousins are in messed up relationships where the women are slaves to the men. I don’t have good role models for relationships and with my luck I’ll end up with an asshole, I don’t want that or want kids so I’ll just stay single.
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        January 2, 2016
        
        The really great thing about your situation is your self-awareness. You don’t play games with yourself and don’t hide from the truth. And that’s what psychological health is about: living life in a way that is authentic to you.
        
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Crystallizing Chaos

January 2, 2016

What are the possible reasons for the physical attraction itself waning over time?

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 2, 2016
  
  Another great question. There are several possibilities. One, for instance, is that one partner finds a way to dramatically improve his or her psychological health. Maybe s/he seeks professional help. Maybe s/he generates a hobby or discovers a pursuit that provides a powerful compensatory mechanism. Maybe there is some significant intellectual or spiritual growth that makes her / him psychologically healthier. As this person becomes psychologically healthier, his /her relationship scenario changes. Now s/he is no longer attracted to the “carrier” of the model that made her/ him happy before.
  
  Another scenario is that a person’s psychological state dramatically deteriorates. This, for instance, is something that happens a lot during the so-called “midlife crisis.” The psychological state has deteriorated, the relational scenario has changed, and a new partner(s) for the new scenario is needed. Or maybe nobody at all is needed at this point.
  
  Yet another possibility is that there wasn’t a real physical attraction to begin with. What there was is a need to fulfill a social mandate. Once that mandate is fulfilled, the person who helped fulfill it is no longer needed. This, for instance, is the scenario of the women who lose sexual interest in their husbands after the wedding / pregnancy / childbirth.
  
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David P. Bellamy

January 2, 2016

I have never experienced love at first sight. I begin to feel attracted to a person only after I get to know her.

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Crystallizing Chaos

January 6, 2016

Yet another follow up question – you said that to judge sexual compatibility, one needs to have a real life interaction and not an on-screen one.

What makes people sexually attracted to screen or fictional representations? Are those attractions also irrational like real life ones?

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 6, 2016
  
  You are a fountain of great questions. 🙂
  
  “Attraction” to imaginary characters or famous people is, first of all, safe. One will never really be rejected by them or have to experience any unpleasantness that is unavoidable when people actually interact.
  
  With famous people, this is reinforced by the feeling that one is making a socially approved choice. If I’m “attracted” to Matt Damon, I feel supported by the huge group of his fans who agree that he’s valuable, attractive, talented. This is not really attraction, as much as a convoluted way of experiencing group acceptance. And if my object of attraction is an iconic fictional character, this plays a similar role.
  
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