Do you believe in love at first sight?

Living proof right here.
Claim that it does not happen that way in RL has just been defeated. Thanks and come again.

lol. Might wanna show just a little more respect for other people's thoughts/experiences/opinions, Dark.

I'm frowning at you right now Teele.

Besides its all in good fun.

I'd like to believe in the possibility of love at first sight, but I find it a hard thing to really understand.

I mean, I don't have much experience in this department so maybe in the future I'll be proved completely wrong, but I think love - true, deep, complete love - is the result of mutual trust, attraction and affection, that comes when you really really know someone. I don't understand how people can say they're in love with somebody if they don't know who that person is. I think then they're not in love with the person, but in love with their idea of the person if that makes sense.

That's not to say I think love at first sight is simple lust or even just a deep attraction. I think you can look at a person and feel that you could love them, that the two of you would go really well together. But I don't think you can just instantly fall in love with someone by looking at them.

But maybe you can. After all, love is just the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain caused by surges of phenylethylamine.

it all pretty much depends on your definition of love.

I personally think love takes time, and is more than just attachment to certain qualities visible only with the eyes. it's finding out everything about a person and choosing to keep them around for both their faults and their strengths... well that's a big part of it anyway...

I believe in Flux at first sight!

Now the question is; If you were ever struck by lighting, would you have even known it.

I don't believe in love at first sight.

Lust, or infatuation--yes, I can see that.

Real love comes with time. This is something my wife and I have discussed at length. She claimed she loved me a few days after we met and I told her she was just infatuated with the new relationship. Nice guy, aye.

She admits now that she realizes the distinction between the two after nearly a decade and a half of marriage.

Consider this. If you 'fell in love at first site' and that person died a week after you met, how long would it take to get over it?

Now imagine the love of your life dying after twenty years of good times and bad. See what I'm getting at? It would be devastating.

Love builds with time folks. Anyone who has been in a loving relationship for years and years will tell you the same. My wife and I can almost finish each other thoughts. And do sometimes. We have a private language that no one else could comprehend and we can communicate much with a brief look.

Can you do that with someone you just met and think you're in love with?

i believe in foxin' the first night!

LOL, Flux, the evil smiley certainly fits.

Tsk!

<----- lol, that's me licking your eyeball.

See? Evil! LOL

No cookies for eyeball lickers.

Okay, sorry about hijacking the thread. Flux, report to the chatroom for your beating.

Love is like a Fire. Hence the idea of a Home being a Hearth, Mantle and Fireplace. A Domain of Warmth.

A fire takes but a spark to start. The clicking of two bits of metal or stone, and poof, you have a flame. At first it explodes, like a match, seating hot and passionate to burn then it slows down once it catches on, slowly it begins to spread and starts to share it's warmth and heat with the area around it, until at long last, you are left not with licking flames dancing and tantalizing but amber's and coal, which we all know is the only part of a fire you can cook on.

Like life and Love, when you meet, there has to be that Spark, something clicked like two stones striking to ignite the flames.

Then you burn for each other, love as you might call it, lust, passion, or just giddy happiness of being together. What ever it will be, it is, and it consumes, and if allowed it will burn the hardest logs.

Then the years pass on, there are licks and flickers of passion, moments of remembering the flame but this can only be because of the constant even heat that is thrown off, that compassion, respect and care for each other grows.

Until finally you are left with deep low burning amber's warm, comforting, enduring and filling, that truly heat the hearth of the home for times to come.

Look at love how you want, be thankful when you find it no matter what the forum, and cherish for the gift that it is.

Well put, Ungood

Yes indeed; many beautiful pictures painted on both sides.

These kind of things always tend to make me smile;

I suffer from a mild case of paranoid schizophrenia, and as such, I'm not that great with people. For one, having to deal with mild psychosis' kind of messes up your view of things. Not knowing wether an idea is sane or not also doesn't further social interaction.

What it has learned me is that there is a difference between seeing someone, and realising someone is there. For me, this is a major issue, but I think this counts for everyone; you can see someone for a hundred times, but not fall in love with someone untill you notice she is there.

For example; There was a girl at my school who was a friend of a friend of a friend. Not someone I would interact with. Now my school isn't big, I must have passed her a hundred times, but it wasn't untill the first time I attended a debating-club meeting I actualy noticed her. We were both drawing on the chalkboard, both drawing eyes (I have a weird facination with eyes), and I fell in love with her on the spot. Three years later, I'm still in love with her.

And if this doesn't convince you, and I'm sure it won't convince a lot of people, I would like to point out there are a lot of different types of love; I know for a fact that my mother loved me the moment she saw me. And I hope that any mother loves her child the moment she sees him/her. Now you tell me that's not love at first sight.

You know, CG, you make some very eloquent points. I have a feeling you're quite the demon on the debate team and verbally I'm not sure I'd want to tangle with you!

CommonGoods wrote:

For me, this is a major issue, but I think this counts for everyone; you can see someone for a hundred times, but not fall in love with someone untill you notice she is there.

This is so beautifully said.

Quote :

We were both drawing on the chalkboard, both drawing eyes (I have a weird facination with eyes), and I fell in love with her on the spot. Three years later, I'm still in love with her.

I shouldn't pry but I really want to know, is this a mutual thing? Did she fall for you, too? Because it makes a nice 'how we met' story.

Quote :

And if this doesn't convince you, and I'm sure it won't convince a lot of people, I would like to point out there are a lot of different types of love; I know for a fact that my mother loved me the moment she saw me. And I hope that any mother loves her child the moment she sees him/her. Now you tell me that's not love at first sight.

And on this point I wish I could entirely agree but I can't. Two thoughts prevent me.

One, the dynamic between meeting a potential mate and meeting your own newborn are different. You have the choice to spend time with another adult, to find out more about each other. With a baby, usually once you meet that child they are a fact of your life.

Two, when each of my children were born I knew it was the right thing to love them right off the bat but I didn't really feel loving. I felt tired. My husband DID fall in love with our daughter the instant he saw her. It took me a little while to adjust to the new little person (that makes me sound awful). With my son he was crying his first cries and I said, "Hey, little guy..." And this still-wet newborn stopped crying immediately and tried to look around for me. I did lose my heart instantly that time.

Sad to say, a friend of mine gave birth to her first, a little girl, and had great difficulty giving the child her love. The girl's a teen now and I think the two have always had a somewhat strained relationship. Things are not always perfect as much as we would like them to be.

However, to be fair, I've heard of many young moms who can't support a baby and plan to give the child up as soon as it's born but have a terrible time doing so. Is it love? Is it possessiveness? Is it simply an experience that they know they won't have? I haven't been in that situation and I can't imagine having to do it. I am willing to concede the point that it is, indeed, love.

As much as I am arguing against 'love at first sight' I won't negate the idea that it might happen once in a blue moon. But isn't that what everyone wishes for? To love and be loved without having to prove ourselves and without preconditions. To be acceptable and love without limits or constraints. I think it's possible to love like that but I'm sticking with the view that it is deeper and more meaningful once you know someone.

A love wherin I can forgive someone for having left the toilet seat up (again) is arguably a more stable love than the mad rush of affection for the handsome hunk at the bookstore.*

*Disclaimer: This statement has been made with tongue in cheek. It has not been inspected by any government agency for truth**, fairness, quality content, enviro-friendliness, or political correctness. Read at your own risk!

**Besides which, the bookstore hunk probably leaves the seat up, too.

Rofl, Fox.

CG, those are some lovely points, but I think maternal love-at-first-sight is probably a lot different than romantic love-at-first-sight. Now, I'm not a mother so I can't speak from experience but you have to admit that it is a completely different situation.

I mean, when a mother looks at her newborn she may be seeing him or her for the first time but this is a baby that has been growing inside her for the last nine months, that she has seen in ultrasounds, felt kicking her, heard its heartbeat. Like I said, I'm not speaking from experience, but I've spoken to my own mother about it and she said that holding your newborn baby for the first time after waiting nine months to meet him or her is an experience unlike any other.

I don't think it's really the same as the general idea of 'love at first sight' - i.e. seeing or meeting someone you have no knowledge of and don't know at all and falling completely and instantly head over heels in love with them.

Now I don't know that I can really give my opinion on that either; I've never been in love, and like I said before while I'd like to believe in the possibility of love at first sight it does seem a little unrealistic. How can you instantly love someone without knowing them? We've all heard the phrase "Don't judge a book by its cover" and it seems to me that love at first sight is doing exactly that, only a way that we perceive as positive rather than negative.

But I am fully willing to be proven utterly wrong, and if I ever do fall in love at first sight I will apologise for my cynicism.

Til then, I remain a little sceptical

Blossom: well put, that last sentence.

CG: typisch gevalletje van bord voor je kop? Heb ik ook hoor ^_^

Edit: Ahum, realizing speaking Dutch all the time might be a little annoying for others. Sorry. Will not do so again!

@ Foxee;
Ok, now you're making me blush
Maternal love is a complicated thing. It happens to be one of things we studied with Biolgy, and there are simply so many things we know nothing about, that may or may not play a part. I'm not claiming to be a specialist, heck, I'm a guy, heck, I'm 18, and perhaps you are rigt and this is just the way I wished things were.

As far as me and the girl; I don't know. We were told to 'get a room' more times then I can recall, she used to review my poems (that I secretly wrote for her, then presented them as if I had them all along) and eventualy I wasn't allowed to debate with or against her, since it interferred with my 'strength' (making mincemeat out of the opposers arguments). As I slowely started to gather the nerves to aproach her, she got a boyfriend, and he's a really great guy, and they seem happy together.

@ Blossom;
Like I pointed out, there are many types of love, and there are many different ways to aproach 'seeing'. Thus came my statement about maternal 'love at first sight'. I do recognise the difference between maternal love and romantic love (how can I not?), but I would also like to point out that the poll made no distinction between the two
You make very valid points, and perhaps it's all just wishfull thinking. I simply believe that by looking at someone, you can see more then just his/her 'cover'.

Quote :

As I slowely started to gather the nerves to aproach her, she got a boyfriend, and he's a really great guy, and they seem happy together.

That is so wrong. So very, very wrong...

Foxee wrote:

Quote :

As I slowely started to gather the nerves to aproach her, she got a boyfriend, and he's a really great guy, and they seem happy together.

That is so wrong. So very, very wrong...

Hahaha, how is that wrong? He's happy, she's happy, I'm happy she's happy, and if he does anything to hurt her, I get to hit him over the head with a baseball bat. Everyone wins!

Except for the part where I lose But like I said, her happiness is what matters.