love at first sight

[Black Core]

do you people think it exists
I don't, how can you fall in love with someone you don't know
However I do think that you can fall in love for someones looks, but still you don't know her. So there can't be something more yet
What's your idea about it?

 

[Kenneth R.]

attraction at first sight- yes, this exists. you see someone beautiful, you acknowledge their beauty.

love at first sight - no. love requires a deeper affection through friendship, shared experiences and discovering each others' personalities and such. you can't have this in an instant, it takes time to develop.

 

[Øjeblikket]

The operative word here is Love. As personal as taste is, we may arrive at the conclusion that love is a fondness that is fresh and love is also a security in the familiarity of another person's company or presence. The latter in my understanding being more like security than excitement or passion. There is an interesting article in this month's edition of National Geographic which, despite the shortcomings of the author's style of prose, elucidates the interesting revelation made by recent studies that indicate Love in the aroused passionate version affects the brain in the same way that obsessive compulsive disorder does. I personally find this form of Eros more conducive to the writing of sonnets than the Love that comes from being someone's friend and knowing his or her in ands outs. I'm currently into writing sonnets for a woman I've never met, so my opinion on Love is that it is truer when at first sight, provided its desire is not simply carnal.

Do I love the object of my attention? like nothing else.

-- to correct the seemingly blatant contradiction in my post, I have seen her and we do correspond; thus "sight" applies.

 

[Kenneth R.]

My objection to that is, if it is immediate, what is there to love besides appearance? And if appearance it is, then that is simply a physical manifestation, a lust, not a "love". Desire or not, love consists of more than a physical relationship. This must be gained through experiences, which exist after the first meeting.

If it is not physical, but immediate, since you do not know this person at all, then your "love" is for all people with such appearance, and thus cannot be specific to any individual. Since it is not exclusive, again I discount this from being "love".

Simply put: You cannot love at first sight. It is easy to make the case for lust, but love is another matter.

 

[speed]

The operative word here is Love. As personal as taste is, we may arrive at the conclusion that love is a fondness that is fresh and love is also a security in the familiarity of another person's company or presence. The latter in my understanding being more like security than excitement or passion. There is an interesting article in this month's edition of National Geographic which, despite the shortcomings of the author's style of prose, elucidates the interesting revelation made by recent studies that indicate Love in the aroused passionate version affects the brain in the same way that obsessive compulsive disorder does. I personally find this form of Eros more conducive to the writing of sonnets than the Love that comes from being someone's friend and knowing his or her in ands outs. I'm currently into writing sonnets for a woman I've never met, so my opinion on Love is that it is truer when at first sight, provided its desire is not simply carnal.

Do I love the object of my attention? like nothing else.

Yes, it is a very interesting article, and the author's prose was I thought, excellent for a popular magazine. It is a rare thing to find a writer who can convey scientific breakthrough and studies in an entertaining manner. SHe referenced herself, and her own love life, I thought a bit copiously; but that I suppose was her frame of reference.

And I agree with the rest of your post. However, I thought you were married to biologist or ecologist? I remember that coming up in an argument.

 

[MasterOLightning]

I think you can love at first sight. Love is a choice.

 

[Kenneth R.]

I think you can love at first sight. Love is a choice.

It's an emotion. You can choose to acknoweldge it or not.

You can't choose to love someone you have already chosen to hate. Therefore, it is not a choice.

 

[MasterOLightning]

But you can choose to love someone you walked past on the street. You can decide that you would give them all the love you have. You can decide to accept whatever flaws they have, no matter how serious.

 

[speed]

Boy we have alot of love threads around here! I feel like I am in a beauty salon.

 

[Kenneth R.]

But you can choose to love someone you walked past on the street. You can decide that you would give them all the love you have. You can decide to accept whatever flaws they have, no matter how serious.

this would be a stupid decision in my opinion, as it is based on absolutely nothing. it is an extreme gamble and in all probability will result in a breakup. i believe that decision should come once one knows what these flaws are, and what their strengths are as well. even the concept of decision is sketchy. it is an emotion, a feeling. you don't choose feelings, they exist, and we choose to acknowledge them or not. you may choose to live with this person, you may choose to love, even without feeling it. you may choose not to, despite feeling it. to do so is superficial.

it's the same thing as pointing to someone in a crowd and saying will you marry me, i love you. you have absolutely no justification, logical or otherwise. it's absurd.

 

[MasterOLightning]

I am not advocating such behavior, but merely acknowledging its possibility.

We have in our society this misconception that we just "fall in love." I think it's a much more active process than that. A chick who's tired of being lonely will probably fall in love a lot more quickly than one who's completely satisfied with her life and is not looking for romance. Falling in love is not like winning the lottery; it's not a matter of chance. Someone who wants to be in love with someone will set themselves up to be in that position. They will subconsciously choose to see certain things and not see others.

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina is a great analysis of this process.

 

[Kenneth R.]

yes, i agree. however, one can also not simply snap their fingers and create the situation.

it takes time, and effort, and is a process, not an immediate reaction. you may attempt an immediate endeavor, and chances are high that you will fail. not only that, it lacks the process of discovery. you can't claim to love someone at first sight. you may find attraction at first sight, and choose (foolishly) to pursue it in hopes of love, but still, this is not love.

 

[hibernal_dream]

Isn't it possible for a person to form a pre-existing conception of what sort of person they love without needing to see that person first? Then if they happen to meet someone with exactly the same qualities would it be considered love at first sight? Or not, because you have already seen them in your mind's eye?

I don't agree that love is an emotion however. Emotions are experienced by one person. Love, I think, requires a reciprocal bond between two people, so it is not possible to love a plant or river. That is another form of love where you can say "I love this plant" and you would be talking about one person's feelings toward the object, whereas if you say two people are "in love" you are talking about the relationship between them.

 

[Kenneth R.]

Actually you are in agreement, you just stated it better than I could.

As for the mind's eye... certainly one can have an idea of what is appealing. But again, without further investigation, you've only got a guess as to whether this person possesses those qualities besides the obvious (physical) that you see at first.

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

do you people think it exists
I don't, how can you fall in love with someone you don't know
However I do think that you can fall in love for someones looks, but still you don't know her. So there can't be something more yet
What's your idea about it?

Personally i think it's at least partially pheromones
and here's why
I remember reading somewhere that if incest is NOT inter-generational, then it's a lot more likely to be a homosexual encounter than a heterosexual one because of "the pheromonal repulsion effect" that prevents hetero people from doing the act that produces children with those specific genetic relatives that are the most likely to produce children being born with the most serious genetic defects
I think that for most of the cases of "love at first sight" what's really happening is, at least partially, the exact opposite of what I described. So, if you're in a crowded room and you feel "love at first sight" and the person you're "instantly in love with" isn't totally obviously by far the sexiest person in the room, then, what's going on is that you're nose's pheromonal receptors are noticing somebody in the room that will give you children that would be genetically superior (absence of dibilitating genetic defects) to the children that would be produced if you mated with any of the other people in the room, but if you were able look at somebody that was obviously the best-looking person in the room, then you're fixation on that person is more likely to be mostly visual

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

Love, I think, requires a reciprocal bond between two people if you say two people are "in love" you are talking about the relationship between them.

the guy that wrote "Fight Club" (I can't remember how to spell his name) also wrote in one of his other books that "the person that you love and the person that loves you are never, ever the same person" and also there is a Dorthy Parker poem that reads:

On the day you say you're his
shivering and sighing
and he swears his love is
infinite and undying
lady, make a note of this
one of you is lying

these authors would probably agree with the published theory that sexual lust is nothing more than a mutation of non-sexual greed and that non-sexual love is nothing more that a form of psychosis

 

[Akirahito]

It's impossible to fall in love at first sight. If someone can actually love someone at first sight that would mean lots of things. For instance, you'd be willing to die for that person the second after you laid eyes on them. Love is a deep emotion that builds over time after knowing a persons qualities, interests, intellect, etc. You cannot gain that information from one look. That's just sexual attraction.

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

It's impossible to fall in love at first sight. Love is a deep emotion that builds over time after knowing a persons qualities, interests, intellect, etc. You cannot gain that information from one look. That's just sexual attraction.

EXACTLY
but my point was that if you're looking at someone in person instead of a photo then, this instantanious sexual attraction would prolly be at least partially a pheromonal attraction instead of the purely visual sexual attraction that one feels when watching their favorite celeb on TV

 

[Kenneth R.]

that is probably true.

 

[tr_ofdallas]

EXACTLY
but my point was that if you're looking at someone in person instead of a photo then, this instantanious sexual attraction would prolly be at least partially a pheromonal attraction instead of the purely visual sexual attraction that one feels when watching their favorite celeb on TV

I totally agree