Love at First Sight
Updated: May 30
I have seen some pretty women in my life and dated a few. I was even somewhat staggered once in the last few years by one startlingly stunning woman that I came face-to-face with at the DeKalb oasis off of I-88 during a rest stop after driving all night and making deliveries. But I believe that I have only experienced something approaching love at first sight once.
That isn’t to say that I haven’t been subject to the same boyhood crushes and infatuations/fascinations that other men have experienced. And I understand that true, long-lasting love requires some knowledge of the object of one’s desire. But I have been smitten from the first moment that I met someone and I know the exquisite agony of feeling compelled to think about her like a man entranced by a voodoo priestess' spell or hex.
I have been very attracted to a few women at the outset and came over time to feel very attuned to them on an almost spiritual level. Some of my most cherished relationships did not start out with a feeling of being thunderstruck, even if I was very attracted to the women at the outset. But it wasn’t what I would refer to as love at first sight and it was still very good.
So what of love at first sight? Do I believe that it is real? Yes, I do. Too many people have philosophized and spoken of it for me to dismiss the idea out of hand. And I too have fell under the spell of love at first sight. I have felt it. I can’t explain it really. How can I differentiate it from infatuation? All that I can say is that it feels different than mere infatuation. I wish that I were an author, a poet, or a playwright. Surely Shakespeare could adequately describe the depths of feeling that accompanied my first glimpses of her. Surely an Ernest Hemingway or a James Taylor could put into words the absolute certainty I felt that I had laid eyes upon the woman that I was meant to love for the rest of my life. Perhaps someone so gifted as an artist could explain the feeling of destiny being fulfilled and of a great cosmic plan coming into alignment.
That, of course, doesn’t mean that love at first sight is “meant to be.” In my limited experience, love at first sight isn’t necessarily reciprocal. The woman that I fell so hard for seemed to like me. In time she professed her love for me. But it is clear from examining the relationship and its demise that she didn’t feel the same depths of feelings for me that I held for her. Sadly, I came to conclude that she perhaps never really felt anything for me at all. Shame that she hadn’t felt that same instant depth of affection for me. I would have done or given almost anything for that. Perhaps she felt the same thing that I felt, only for another man. Perhaps they both felt such intense feelings for each other from the moment that they met one another.
But even so, that doesn’t mean that my feelings of love at first sight were somehow “wrong“ or “misplaced.” I felt what I felt. We all have a choice in the way that things turn out. Perhaps she turned her back on something good and true that could have been the kind of love which gives rise to poems and songs. Then again, perhaps not. I suppose that we will never know. C'est la vie, as they say.
As you might expect, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social scientists have written about such topics as love at first sight. Below are links to a couple articles on the topic. If you are fortunate enough to feel such a wave of intense emotion upon meeting someone for the first time, I hope that you are similarly fortunate enough for those feelings to be mutual and reciprocated and for your love to last you for the rest of your life. And here is a link to a music video that kind of speaks to that feeling of “craziness” that can wash over you when in the presence of the object of your desire:
“Is There Love at First Sight?”
“Is Love at First Sight Possible?”
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