When I was thirteen, I babysat with a friend at her neighbor’s house. Tacked to the front of the family’s fridge was a photo of a blonde-haired boy about our age. It was love at first sight.
It wasn’t just that this boy was gorgeous in that dreamboat, my-bangs-fall-in-my-eyes-and-I-don’t-even-care kind of way. It was something more—a cosmic connection, the opening of a new and important chapter in my life, I was sure. I still remember his name: Chris Kalmbach. (If you’re out there, Chris, please Facebook me.)
Of course, what I felt gazing at the photo on a stranger’s fridge was not love; it was attraction that led to a short-lived, albeit memorable, infatuation. Which begs the question, does love at first sight really exist? And if so, can you fall in love with a representation of someone, for example, an online profile? In this brave new dating world of eHarmony, Facebook, and Google, what if your first “sight” is virtual?
Love or Lust?
Your eyes meet across a crowded room and it’s an Emeril-style, “Bam!” Minutes later, you’re all googly eyes and weak knees. But is it love, or just animal attraction? When Lauren Carnighan spied the most gorgeous guy she’d ever laid eyes on at a party in college, she thought she was seeing her future. “That is what I want my husband to look like,” she remembers thinking. They dated for a while, but ultimately, she says, the guy she had pegged for the father of her unborn children was a “complete letdown,” not to mention a horrible hook-up. She realizes now what she had felt was lust, not love, and even that fizzled.
Filling In the Blanks
As a self-described realist, Allison Moss doesn’t believe in love at first sight. True love, she believes, is “when you know all of the good things and bad things about a person and still love him.” If you can get all that from a glimpse across the bar, then you’re a psychic. She does believe, however, in “intuition at first sight.”
Sometimes, when we’re attracted to a person, we read between the lines for other signs of compatibility, such as, he’s wearing hiking boots = he must be outdoorsy. Or, he gave up his subway seat to a pregnant woman = he’s a family man. We make hundreds of snap judgments from visual clues every day. It’s natural we would do it with potential partners as well. If your first impressions are correct, it may just be the beginning of a beautiful relationship. If not, well, good luck with that.
Young Love
Call them romantics, but young people are more likely to fall in love at first sight, says couples therapist Lisa Thomas. People in their teens and twenties are still forming their identities, she explains, and are more likely to finish forming them around a partner. However, “people with more life experience are less likely to believe in the concept.” The older we get, the more we base love on compatibility rather than attraction and have a fixed idea of whom we’d be compatible with.
Charlotte Gregorie met her husband as a freshman in college and was “smitten at day one.” Jenna Morris, on the other hand, needed more than a glimpse to fall for her second husband. “I used to believe in [love at first sight], but not so much anymore,” says Morris. “[Love] goes so much deeper than physical appearance.”
Delayed Reaction
Just because you fall in love at first sight doesn’t mean you’re down for the count. Sarah Fountain and her husband experienced love at first sight at nineteen- and twenty-one years-old, but it wasn’t until years later that the word was first used and more years (including a few break-ups) until they were finally married. “Looking back, I can still remember ‘the night’ we first saw each other and fell in love,” says Fountain. “However, the falling continued for many, many years and occasionally there were bruises.” It was love at first sight, but “in quite a round-about way!”
A Whole New Light
Sometimes you look at someone, and it’s like you’re seeing him or her for the first time. Lassiter Wall had known Billy since she was little, but had never been attracted to him. He wasn’t even “on [her] radar.” Then one fateful day Billy walked into a bar where she was hanging out with friends and suddenly she saw him in an entirely different light. She had just broken up with her boyfriend, was changing jobs, and moving to the city where he lived. “I happened to see him at a huge turning point in my life, and I have been hooked ever since,” says Wall. “All the stars … aligned.” They’re now engaged.
Love in the Age of Technology
But how many people these days get their first glimpse of a potential mate in person? Certainly the numbers have decreased with the advent of dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony, as well as social networking sites like Facebook, not to mention the fine pastime of Google stalking. Who hasn’t Googled a blind date before the face-to-face? Or fallen in “love” with a match’s profile? Perfect on paper is now perfect online.
When Elizabeth Rudnick found (let’s call him) Bob on Match.com, she had “one of those, ‘A-ha! Hit the jackpot’ moments.” The first few dates went okay, until he brought her to his apartment and proceeded to pee with the door open. Any instant spark she’d felt instantly fizzled.
The problem, says therapist Thomas, is that “you’re missing the nonverbal, the vibe of the person as you’re sitting in the same room with him.” Maybe someone’s online personality has all the prerequisites to sweep you off your feet—similar interests, a good job, a great picture, spell check—but what a computer can’t give you is that one essential thing that love at first sight requires: good old fashioned, pheromone-fueled chemistry.
Which doesn’t go to say love at first click can’t happen, but it’s no replacement for that first adrenaline-pumping eye-lock. Ultimately, what love at first sight boils down to is attraction, intuition, and perhaps, flexibility. Who knows, there may still be a chance for me and Chris Kalmbach. But he better hurry—my identity is solidifying fast.