Here’s a question for you. I won’t get much into a preamble because it is an oldie (but goodie) that is rattling around in my fat head for some reason or another and I’ve decided that I’m curious on the current state of affairs with opinions on the subject.
What are your thoughts on the concept of “love at first sight”? Does such a thing even exist, or is it a romantic notions more akin to fantasy than reality? If it exists (for you), does it require the other party to reciprocate that love? Or does it still exist when the feeling is unilateral? What the heck is “love at first sight” anyway?
As things are wont to do on these 1/2p posts, feel free to go off on your own tangents with your comments, just stick to the concept of “love at first sight”. I have my own thoughts but I am more interested in what you might have to say about it, no matter how mundane or outlandish those thoughts might be. For science! Or, just to satisfy my curiosity.
And… Go!
53 responses to “Half-penny thoughts — 13dec25”
Personally, I’m not fully sold on the whole idea of “romantic love.” “Love at first sight,” seems like an easy excuse for people to rush into things. Chemistry is confusing, and people have a tendency to romanticize lust. Unrequited love has a bit of lust infused, I think that’s why it hurts.
I can see that side of the equation and agree that it is sometimes applied in the way you describe (i.e., romanticized lust as the justification for “love at first sight”). I wonder, however, if there are real instances of the phenomena, enough so that people romanticize it but only because they want to experience it as well and have not had such things happen for them in reality.
I’m treating it, in this example, as a kind of enlightenment/satori experience. An individual cannot make “love at first sight” happen and whatever the individual imagines is not the actual experience — because it is something beyond words or that can only be expressed indirectly. 🤔
I probably think too much.
I do think that instant connections can happen, where people just “click.” But I don’t think of that as a love at first sight thing. It’s more of a finding YOUR PEOPLE, type of thing. Perhaps that type of experience could occur at a deeper level, where the feeling of love is felt by two people. IDK. Tough question.
I certainly don’t have all of the answers, so maybe it is something like that. Maybe what we call love at first sight is more of an instant connection. Something more to add to my pondering of imponderables.
Ok, here’s a rant from a different perspective. How many people believe in love at first sight and develop unrequited love for a celebrity? That’s frickin scary because some people lose their own reality to an imaginary one. (Examples, celebrity stalking, breaking into homes, rushing on stage, etc…) One thing that has always bothered me about Hollywood is the way that city and the surrounding “hilly” areas allow “art installations” of staircases behind celebrity’s homes, so paparazzi and fans can see over their HUGE privacy fences. The communities the stars take refuge in, continue to sell them to others based on the notion of a romanticized ideal they are paid to perpetuate.
I used to love finding homeless people sleeping on those staircases. They were like frickin’ guardians against the paparazzi. They had no way to profit off the people those stairs where meant to harass. Nor were they aware of who lived beyond the walls.
Stalking is a bit of a sickness of the mind, I think — for many of the reasons you list. But if it is true love at first sight and not motivated by possession and/or lust, you would think that stalking would be the furthest idea from the mind of the person experiencing “love”. I that’s proof positive that you are not really feeling love, but desire, which are not always mutually inclusive.
Great points to add to the discussion.
[Aside:] Hollywood is all-around a little bit weird, doncha think?
Way too weird. I ran away.
Smart! 😂
For several years my job was to live with and help a few wealthy senior citizen women from Encino to the Hollywood Hills. I ran away from a good job and many opportunities for advancement in the arts, to go be homeless. I’m still not sure if that was smart or super dumb. Sitting here where I’m at in life, it seems like that was probably not a wise choice. I’ve yet to reap any rewards from it. I’ll have to keep moving forward and see what happens in life. 🙃😁
You never know. Later on, it might seem like the best choice you ever made. But by then you’ll have new decisions to question 😊
Wow, what a deep question, and I’m interested to see what others say, and yourself!
I think love at first sight is rare, but a strong connection or spark absolutely exists. What people call love at first sight is often instant attraction mixed with intuition. It’s unfinished. It’s the spark that says pay attention, not the promise that says this will last.
I agree. “Love at first sight” is not something that I can think can happen often (or, perhaps, at all) in someone’s life. It makes you wonder about those who are claiming to experience it on an annual (or even monthly) basis.
I tend to think it is probably something you didn’t see coming, is probably inconvenient when it does happen, and I don’t think there is any inevitability to it when it happens; you’re not “fated” for each other just because there is the element of “love at first sight”. Actually, I suspect it goes unrequited more often than requited (or maybe I just read Tristan and Isolde too many times).
Thanks for the comment!
I’m with you. If “love at first sight” exists at all, it seems like it would be rare by definition, not something that happens on a recurring schedule. The idea that it’s repeatable almost drains it of meaning.
My suspicion is the same as yours: that it goes unreturned more often than not. That might be why it survives best in literature, where longing and imbalance tend to be more interesting than mutual fulfillment.
Absolutely. If everyone gets what they want there is no conflict and the story gets mighty boring mighty quickly. 😊
Thanks for the conversation; everyone’s comments have been enlightening in some way and I appreciate you sharing your thoughts.
Thank you as well, it’s been a wonderful conversation from such a deep question. I’m glad I could offer a little something at the very least!
More than a little 🙂
❤️
I really like how you put, “and go.” 😂 That’s great.
The old me would have gone on a rant and a half about love at first sight. However, the older me says if you want to believe it exists, more power to you. I would be so hurt if someone told me that something I believed in was just a pipe dream, a myth or even worse, a delusion.
It hadn’t happened to or for me. Yet? 🤔
Part of me thinks it’s an unobtainable notion that entertainers have used to sell the idea of romance. Those stories that you read about Sue and Joe parroting the ‘it was love at first sight’ statement cements the notion.
I lean more to the ‘lust at first sight’. Though that isn’t romantic. Put that on a greeting card. I SAW YOU LEANED OVER THE SINK AT IN THE BAR PUNKIN’ YOUR GUTS OUT. THE WAY THOSE JEANS HUG THE CURVE OF YOUR BUTT AS YOU HEAVED; SEXY AS HELL. WILL YOU BE MY VALENTINE?” 💘 That just doesn’t hit the heart strings. Something attracted you to that person. A soft laugh. A gentle smile. The shade of that persons hair. The sound of someone voice. I could go on here. It all boils down to a series of nerves; telling other nerves that this person cool. Now isn’t that romantic? 🥰
I expect there to be a high possibility of a throwdown in the comments because of the word “love”. It seems to make people inclined to want to try and quantify the unquantifiable and someone else to disagree. Hence: “Go!”
Love alone can be a weird thing to say exists or not. You almost have to treat it as if on faith, because no one can make a device that measures it. It’s kind of like gravity in that respect: you feel it, you know something is there, but you can’t say exactly what it is that makes it work because you can’t measure it except in what it does, not in the way it “is”.
Perhaps it goes back to the era of Courtly Love, with troubadours and their unrequited love for women on a different social tier or, like as not, married to a powerful man. I think that some of this has carried through since that period, maybe even remains the core premise behind “love at first sight”.
Perhaps it is just chemistry (I won’t deny that), but maybe there are times that such a thing goes beyond mere chemistry. But that could jump into the deep end of the pool of metaphysics and maybe we shouldn’t go there… yet. 😉
[Also: I heard some pickup lines that some guy swore would work. I think puking guts out was part of his lines. Or maybe he was just recommending against using them when someone was puking out their guts 😂]
Society puts too much pressure on love. It’s part of the money machine now. Roses and chocolates. Pretty cards dripping with heart melting words. While, I think it’s part of human nature to want to be in a warm loving relationship, I don’t buy into the notion that there is someone out there for everyone. If that was the case our population would be evenly distributed. Which I guess ,for me, puts someone being your soul mate into a negative light. 🤷♀️
That’s kind of a phony, commercialized vision of love. All Hallmark and shudderingly gross. EWWWW!
I don’t necessarily think that there is a “One Love” for everyone. But there may be for some people. Why? Like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll, the world may never know.
I appreciate you adding to this conversation, it makes it infinitely more interesting with your contributions. Thanks! 💙
You are welcome. Thank you for posing the questions, thoughts. 💕
Still shuddering at the greeting card vision of love. LMAO.
😉 Glad I could help.
It may well exist, but I’ve never experienced it. I thought I had, but the other party turned out to be a narcissist with his own agenda of gaslighting, manipulating etc. I was fortunate to find out before any irreparable damage was done, but I’ve known others destroyed by such things. I think we all want to believe that it exists, and writers – not exempting those of us who lay claim to that title- are to some extent responsible. Thus we’re all vulnerable when ‘love at first sight’ heaves into view. Proceed with caution, I’d say, if you think you glimpse it. Don’t rush in. I could go on, but I think you get where I’m at on this. Thanks, Michael.
It is rather easy to get sucked into something that seems like what might be desirable, especially if you a hopeless romantic (I might or might not know someone who fits that label), isn’t it?
I’ve been around long enough to find the notion somewhat suspect, but I haven’t ruled out that it can happen. Every time I see something like that with other people, it almost always seems to have an underlying issue that isn’t resolved between the two people, so there is a kind of tension on the façade that you pick up when you look closer. That’s, of course, if that love at first site has been explored — something I’m not convinced happens just because there is that connection between two people.
Thanks for the contributions to this discussion. I appreciate getting multiple outside views. 🙂
You’re welcome, Michael. I’m alway suspect when a couple claims that they never argue. That could be grumpy old me, because I never had an argument before I got married. I used to be very easy going, live and let live, but tensions arise with sharing living space, and the need to fight my corner came into being. Maybe people exist who are so in harmony that they never have differences to iron out; but in almost 70 years I haven’t met any. It is what it is. 😐
They argue, they are just keeping up appearances by saying otherwise. 😉
I could never be in a relationship where I didn’t argue. Not that I want drama – opposite but the ‘keeping up with everyone’ ugh just no! Personally arguments in relationships can be quite enlightening 💡and can in fact help the relationship be deeper…I guess that would be another topic entirely 😂
Soon after “How would you define beauty?” 🙂
People who claim not to argue are not communicating at all, if it is true. Or they are in a relationship with the doppelgänger, at which point you have to ask where the joy is in that [I actually had a friend at one point who had a hard time getting into a relationship because his criteria was basically a female mirror of himself].
A chap I knew and used to play music with wrote a great song containing the lines: ‘Love at first sight/You must be joking/I’ve seen where that gets you before’. (The song was much more complex than a simple ‘poor me, hurt by love’ song, but let’s not get into.that!).
Romanticised? Certainly, as an idea, but one that I wanted to believe when I was younger; but age and experience do their best to put paid to that. And then, when you least expect it, and when you’re not looking, something inexplicable happens. Don’t ask me what but it’s like electrical impulses that connect on the same wave length – there is noise all around but it’s as if it exists on a different plane. I guess that’s what ‘love at first sight’ is really – something that is undefinable because it exists as pure feeling rather than something tangible.
Does this make any sense?
Love these stimulating questions!
Glad you are enjoying it. Guess I’d rather involve others than just go off on my own little rants as I have in the past. It’s nice to get some other perspectives.
I think there is something different from the “I’ve been a fool in love/fooled by love”, which is what I think your friend was getting at, and the non-lust-driven variety of “love at first sight”. There is loving someone, and wanting to “get some loving” from someone. Sometimes you want both. Other times, there are cases where the lusty end of it is a secondary sensation that you can deal without or is nonessential. I’m not talking pure agape, but something trending in that direction, if that makes any sense.
I tend to agree with how you tried to indirectly define it. The more I have thought about such things the more convinced that they are on the same kind of things that cannot be verbalized any better than Tao or Zen Satori. The love at first sight that can be described by words is not the love at first sight, to steal from Lao Tzu.
Thanks for your thoughts, Chris. It’s nice to get a male perspective into the mix on this conversation (aside from my own), because to really shows that the thinking is closer than it is further apart, and pop psychology sure likes to put things in terms of Venus and Mars.
Lao Tzu put it so much better than I!
And, yes, the Venus and Mars myth that we are sold…I think that, if we genuinely put all of our cards on the table, we’d see that we are all in the same icy ocean swimming for the same lifeboat.
Glug glug glug….
😆
🙂
It sounds nice but honestly I think the majority of “love at first sight” is more lust/desire at first sight – which again is fun until you realise the person is as dull as a brick and that fades too 🤭
I guess I’m a bit weird…I think people can get more beautiful the more you get to know them. Maybe it’s part of me being pansexual?
I enjoy the drama in books/movies with this aspect but in reality it doesn’t click with me. I don’t mean it in a cynical way – I love love but for me love isn’t just that initial spark at first sight – I know that is something a lot of people mistake for love & chase the initial spark again & again.
Interesting topic – I’m enjoying these little alleys your asking us to wander around ☺️
I absolutely agree it is in most cases a “I want to get into your pants” thing.
Oh… Beauty… that’s a whole different topic than love 😏 In that respect I believe that many people definitely grow more beautiful the longer you know them, but I was never one to chase the popular beauty definitions. I’ve been told more than once that my idea of beauty is… nonstandard.
As I said elsewhere, I don’t know that it necessarily exists for everyone to experience, but I do believe there are encounters that are paradigm shifting encounters where one or both parties recognizes there is an instant love outside of lust. But it is so rare as to be virtually nonexistent.
Glad you’re enjoying the mind exercises. I certainly am enjoying the various responses and in getting the opportunity to get to know some of my readers a little better than I did before I turned these from rants and personal philosophic explorations to conversations. Thank you for sharing your thoughts! 💕
Yeah sadly it does seem like people throw the words around a lot & they mostly just want another trophy, notch on the bedpost etc.
Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder – definitely would be another interesting topic!
The idea of a love that transcends time is one I wholeheartedly love & honestly the thought of it both scared the shit out of me & made my heart ache when I was younger. Life teaches you so much over the years – if I could tell my younger self anything it would be don’t let fear stop you from opening your heart….of course she’d tell me to piss off and mind my business, My teenage self would be even more colourful…hmm…might do some writing to my younger selves at some point & see what comes up!
Anyways happy to be part of the conversation – I’d take it over small talk anyday 😅 and I’m really enjoying reading through the responses too!
Oh, to be a fly on the wall when your younger self talks to your older self. I might offer to bring cookies if I could listen in. Now… there’s a potential throw-down in the making.
Just let me know which kinds of cookies both of you like so I don’t bake up some oatmeal-raisin cookies just to have only those left on the plate. 🤣
Ha! Yeah it’s gonna be pretty interesting 🤣 I’m glad you gave me fair warning about the raisins in your cookies…. thinking a raisin is a delicious chocolate chip & finding out the hard way shudders 🤣
In reality, I’m totally against such perversions of my desserts. But there are people out there who apparently like things that resemble bloated ticks in their mouth shudder.
It’ll therefore only be variants of chocolate chips in my cookies! ❤️
Another point of why I don’t feel compelled by “love at first sight” is that anyone can wear a mask, put on an appearance, play a part – I prefer people who are just real. I guess I have encountered to many people who just can’t be real, even with themselves.
I think if they can obfuscate themselves enough to mimic “love at first sight”, then it is only a pale imitation or a subversion of the concept — not the real thing.
And… I think if you think it is love at first sight less than a prolonged period of time after first “sighting” the person, it is probably more of a lust at first site thing. That period of time, I think should be at least several years after you meet someone before you declare something like “love at first sight”.
The former is instantaneous, whereas the latter requires the passage of time to confirm. I think. Maybe. Perhaps. IDK.
Sadly I’ve had my share of narcissistic people in my life – not in romantic love but in family relationships which I guess has made me more wary but on the flipside I’m pretty decent at cutting through BS & knowing when someone isn’t being real with either me or themselves.
On your time point absolutely – love just deepens…as I said before it’s not just the spark – you know that you just love the heart, bones & soul of the person which I think, imo, is much deeper and certainly more romantic than love at first sight.
I have had plenty of those kinds of folks in my life as well. Where I used to put up with it, I now drop them like hot potatoes. I just don’t have the strength to deal with that kind of vampiric energy any more.
Definitely WRT deepening. I lean on the side of that you always felt love for someone from when you first met them, but could only articulate so afterwards. IDK, I’m being convoluted in my reply here, mostly because I can’t find the words to explain what my head is thinking. Hence, the reason for this query. 🙂
Love at first sight has merit, but maturation, nurturing and engagement is what makes it real. Otherwise, it’s artifice or at the very least, impetuousness.
Absolutely. It seems that it could easily slip into lust at first sight without those things. But I might argue that it could be an immature kind of love that it develops from. IDK, I’m maybe needing some sleep LOL.
Never say never
What happens if you do?
Love can be like a fine wine 🍷
that improves with age 🤔🕶
but a splash of lust at first
sight ❤️ 👀 is a great start 😎
It certainly doesn’t hurt in most cases 😊
First, I think it’s important to remember there are MANY (and I mean: infinite) forms of love. People say lust is only carnal. If you really look into it, at its base, I disagree. It’s so much more layered than that. There’s friendship love, family love, love built of long-standing understanding, there’s indescribable love, there’s physical love and intellectual love, there’s passionate love and comfortable love. AND every relationship has its own mixture of any of these.
Now add in spirit and soul. We are all connected in some way or other. There are times when two connect on a deeper level than face-to-face. I believe (and know from experience) that we can love without having ever physically met someone. Love is not an emotion. It’s an act and connection beyond the physical realm, though we physically act on that love in a myriad of ways.
Can a person “fall” in love at first sight? I believe that yes there are times that a connection beyond understanding can be made and understood (though not fully) at the initial sight. Michael, you and I have discussed this a bit prior about feeling a connection to someone and not understanding what that connection is or why. And yet it exists. Sometimes those connections are some form of love. Sometimes it is born of an unfounded friendship, a like-attracts-like sort of thing.
True, there are multiple forms of love and I didn’t specify (“on purpose, mwahahaha,” whispered the blog’s evil overlord).
Interesting take on the matter, something I don’t think anyone else touched on was the element of spirit and soul and those types of connections; also bringing up love as an act rather than an emotion. Because, really, what is love but a facet of joy when it exists, whereas hate is a facet of anger. When you eliminate that artificial connection and bring back love as an act (rather than a react) you have some potentially interesting implications.
While I eschew the “falling in” part of love at first sight (because, after all, the opposite is “falling out” and I question that Love is as fickle a thing as that), I agree. There are are connections that cannot be casually explained away readily or easily. And I don’t think love requires a reason to happen. Sometimes, as I am fond of saying, things just are as they are.
Thanks for the comment, Tara. It helps keep this dried up nut of a noggin somewhat flexible when I get to hear different perspectives. 💕