Most people are aware of that certain style of cheesy romantic movie where the main characters fall desperately in love in no more than a few seconds. The leading heroes don’t know each other, but all of a sudden their eyes meet, and they immediately know that they are destined for one another. Love at first sight! But is this Hollywood vision of the world anything like reality? Can you truly recognize your true love so easily or is real life more problematic than that? It all depends upon what we understand by love. Read on to discover more about this phenomenon that has more to do with primal desire than it has about everlasting love.
In my opinion, people believe in the concept of love at first sight because it offers them a happy, comforting view of how relationships work, but the truth is that this seemingly common phenomenon doesn’t really exist in the way people think it does. Lots of you will now be yelling at your screen, saying how when your folks met, or when you were first introduced to your husband or wife, it WAS definitely love at first sight. You’re thinking of people that had the most passionate, profound and instantaneous of connections, felt as if they were 100% destined to meet the other person, and now 10, 20, 30 years down the road are just as in love and happy as when they started out. I understand, and it goes without saying I’m not saying that the kind of profound, immediate attractions that take place on a daily basis between strangers can’t develop into something marvellous and long lasting. I just think that there is a major distinction to be made between love and infatuation (or crush).
A crush is that dizzy sensation that can be felt when you have just been introduced to someone new who blows you away completely. And yes, this can happen with just one glance! Our entire body feels it like an adrenaline spike that makes everything around us unreal, the ground shakes underneath our shoes, and millions of butterflies flutter in our belly. It’s a weird and magical feeling. But does it survive for ever? Would you really want it to? Of course not! Because who could live like that their whole life?
Infatuations generally do not last more than a few months, but in that time the object of our affection can do practically nothing wrong, seems perfect in every way. The sexual attraction is so forceful as to be almost overpowering. However, romances that are built on nothing more than this sort of sexual attraction are usually fated to end in tears, once the crush starts to fade away. We feel drawn to the other by just looking at them, and our body trembles with the slightest touch. However, relationships that are based on nothing more than this kind of basic animal attraction are usually destined to end in tears, once the infatuation starts to fizzle out.
True love, on the other hand, cannot be felt in such an intense and immediate way. I don’t think so. It is an emotion that grows gradually, and it’s predicated not on a physiological reaction but on a real physical, mental and spiritual affinity with the other person. Reaching this point takes time, persistence and understanding – and it is clearly impossible to know someone in this deep way when you only just met 5 minutes ago! Of course, the natural trajectory of most romances makes the passage from crush to love an easy and uncomplicated one, so that when the powerful feelings of the early days inevitably begin to diminish, deeper more purely loving feelings take over.
So, ‘love at first sight’ as such maybe just a delusion. But remember this doesn’t mean that a fleeting crush can’t be the start of a authentic tale of everlasting love!
The author of this article is the life coach and relationship expert Melinda Suarez. Her articles have been published on various websites and in various languages, including Spanish (como recuperar a tu pareja) across the world.
