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Is Love At First Sight Real?

Is love at first sight just an elusive cliché? Or is it actually possible to fall for someone from the first moment? A look at the science and emotion behind it all.

By Patricia SarkarPublished 7 years ago 8 min read
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When someone claims 'love at first sight,' people are quick to raise suspicions, and usually eyebrows. After all, doesn’t it seem strange (read: insane) that a person could so immediately feel such a strong attachment to someone that they only just met?

To feel love upon seeing someone for the first time sounds romantic, but not everyone will agree that it actually happens. In fact, it's just the sort of unbelievable thing you only believe can happen if it did, to you. With a healthy dose of skepticism, let's critically examine the facts and settle the debate once and for all: is love at first sight real?

What is Love?

The most common argument against the existence of love at first sight involves a semantic attack. Love, declares the members of this camp, requires more than just an observation of physical features; instead, the notion of feeling instant love might more accurately be called sexual attraction in disguise.

These naysayers drill this point home by pointing out that aside from being handsome or pretty, people seek traits like kindness, respect, trust, and loyalty in a partner before they can be receptive to the idea of a romantic relationship.

In other words, if you think you feel instant love but have no knowledge of the person's actual personality, think again.

However, this is not to say that physical and psychological attraction are separate in the onlooker's evaluation; known in the psychology world as the halo effect, there's a tendency for people to automatically attribute specific traits to another person based on your overall impression of them.

For example, a good-looking guy wearing eyeglasses is a smart geek, and a lady sitting alone at a bar with an hourglass figure in a long, black dress is likely a sophisticated, wealthy and promiscuous woman. It will come as no surprise that the halo effect is also known as the "what is beautiful is good" principle. Therefore, one can argue that love at first sight exists to the extent that a person buys into those stereotypical assumptions and adopts them into their general evaluation. Yes, even if these assigned characteristics do not end up holding up long term, the instant feeling that another person evoked in you can rightfully be declared love, albeit not necessarily the best practice to find a compatible partner.

Interpersonal attraction of the romantic kind happens all the time, and love does not have to rely on accurate descriptions of a human being to be realized; more precisely, love can't rely on accurate descriptions of a human being, as accuracy is irrelevant to an inherently subjective process.

A particularly intense set of feelings 'at first sight', therefore, is not invalid solely because it is more a product of imagination and not actual experience–feelings are always products of one's imagination, as seen in phrases like "listen to your heart" and "trust your gut", both of which describe emotionally-based decision making.

Think of it this way: love is irrational to the core, in that loving someone says nothing concrete about the person you love except for that your brain has perceived it as a worthy entity. In committed relationships, we come to back those feelings up with fact (she supports my career goals; he is a doting father), but even those assessments are debunk-able.

In other words, yes, instant love can be very short lived and disappear without warning, but so can the love between a couple married for 40 years. Still, the longer love has persisted, the lower the chances are that it will go away because you've presumably tested the love under many conditions; indeed, love can be born in an instant, but this does not necessarily bode well for its projected duration.

Love Drug

Scientists, and biologists in particular, tend to look at love from a physiological and neurological perspective. While cultural and societal differences dictate the way one expresses love, the emotion itself is common among all humans and even exists in some animals.

Actually, from an evolutionary standpoint it might be best to think of love not as an emotion but as an impulse; what feels like love is actually nature's way of maximizing the chances that we'll procreate and, later on, that we'll keep our beloved offspring safe and stable. But even though we know the evolutionary basis for love, that does not clarify the conditions that this mix of chemicals will or won't flood our brain, or minimize the the experience that manifests when it does.

However, examining the makeup of this chemical cocktail itself has proven very useful for scientists in figuring out factors like when, who and how soon we love, and can love.

Researchers have gotten a pretty good idea of what love is on a biological level, by exposing self-identified 'lovers' to the object of their love and studying their brain activity at the point of exposure. Studies have revealed that when love is in the air (so to speak), several parts of the brain are activated to release chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin. Together, these substances operate as a love drug, and bring feelings of happiness, companionship and excitement.

When it comes to so-called passionate love, most abundant during the fleeting 'honeymoon stage', the pattern of activation in the brain is remarkably similar to that of someone who has just taken a hit of cocaine. And the drug-love connection does not end there; desire and withdrawal are hallmarks of both passionate love and drug addiction. Unlike the latter, though, passionate love tends to wear off with time and transform into a more subdued version of itself, which people in the biz call compassionate love.

If I haven't yet sufficiently de-romanced love for you, the existing research on falling in love boils down to the following conclusion: if 'instant love' were to occur, this means that a person has had the 'love/drug' areas of the brain activated just as instantly, which is a question of human perception; don't worry, the scientists went there.

It has been observed scientifically that humans can assess the attractiveness of another person in a fraction of a second. The brain has the capacity to form an initial judgment in such a short amount of time by looking at the face, and other physical traits (your imaginations will have to suffice). This sort of evaluation has a lot to do with our evolutionary wishes to be fruitful and multiply, and not with an individual's level of superficiality.

To that end, eye-tracking experiments seem to conclude that men are more likely than women to look at the waist-to-hip ratio, ostensibly because of this number being indicative of a woman's reproductive health. This is all to say that on a mechanical level, all perceptual assessments happen incredibly quickly in the brain, and the subsequent chemical release (that we experience as emotion) is only a product of that process. We might fancy ourselves complicated creatures, but our fluctuating emotions have plenty of rhyme and reason, our hearts are mere puppets controlled by our puppet master brains.

While the heart is the symbol of love, one can argue that it is the brain that falls in love. Still, the heart and the brain work together when it comes to love at first sight. Upon seeing a (subjectively) attractive individual, which is the first criterion for a partner, the brain releases chemicals to make the person feel excited and happy. Likewise, the brain stimulates the heart to beat faster and for the individual to feel butterflies in the stomach.

How Deep is Your Love

Love certainly has a sexual aspect to it; a couple's sex life is often indicative of the relationship's strength. In contrast, lust is focused on erotic intentions and the desire for sexual satisfaction. It is important to differentiate these two feelings in the discussion of love at first sight because 'lust at first sight' is its closest relative, and the two are easily confused.

If someone is truly in love, the loving feeling must be accompanied with the rational decision, or intention, to partner up with a significant other. Lust has clear goals of sexual reward while love often encompasses abstract and complex goals, many of which take time to develop. This doesn't mean that love at first sight doesn't exist, rather it explains why we tend to think of it as mere rom com fodder.

Essentially, instant love is intense and filled with attraction, but it is also filled with long-term potential, until proven otherwise. If the imagined characteristics are, in fact, realized, a committed relationship can blossom and lead to the creation of a family. Again, this kind of love is not deep-rooted at first, since time is a necessary factor to building a sustainable foundation. Two mutually attracted people must spend some time to interact and learn things about one another beyond physical attributes. However, this does not mean that love at first sight is silly or simplistic. Such an emotion cannot be judged for its triviality simply because its duration is uncertain when it has only begun. Love that did not last for long, or even for a day, is still love.

Instant love–Love At First Sight–might best be thought of as nature's shortcut, a quick yet hugely valuable mode of cognitive assessment and decision making. The decision may or may not be a dead end–but it can't really hurt, either (at least not in the long run). The human brain (really, every brain) is programmed to help individuals find potential partners without having to go through the hassle of interacting with every other human being on the planet.

We have tools at our disposal to make it happen. Sometimes the tools work, sometimes they don't, at which point we nurse our broken hearts while (and this is key) cross another person off of our "Potential Partners" list. And so, while the process does not always seem like it's working, and while you might convince yourself in hindsight that your judgement must have been skewed for falling so quickly, give yourself a break!

Understand that nature's rules operate on a level that sometimes appear futile in our everyday lives. Even while its progression toward a committed relationship is not a certainty, love at first sight is definitely real and definitely capable of changing a person’s life, that is, if your heart is open and you're willing to follow it.

lovefact or fiction
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About the Creator

Patricia Sarkar

Raised on a steady diet of makeup and games. Eager to share my experiences with the world and make a difference, article by article! :)

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