Can Love At First Sight Be Real?

‘Love at first sight’ is the base of most of the romantic comedies that we all have grown up watching. All of us at some point have hoped that it happens to us. Some of us got lucky and others were just left wondering about its existence. But it is indeed a tricky thing to validate. Falling in love at first sight is a highly subjective emotion. It varies with people and how they are preconditioned about the concept of love.

Love is an emotion that everyone experiences differently in their lives. There is no way in which we can quantify that and say which one is the best. Similarly, love at first sight can be a tricky thing to prove because everyone believes in different concepts of love and functions at different levels of cynicism.
But can ‘love at first sight’ be a real possibility for everyone regardless of what they might or might not believe in?

‘In Love’ Or ‘Loving’?

 

Relationship and communication expert Fiona Fine explains that ‘in love’ and ‘loving’ are two different things. We can spend time with an individual and learn to love them out of our attachment to them. It is no different than loving a friend. But being in love is a totally different ball game. It involves many changes in our hormones and the way we crave for them. Falling in love brings an array of emotions with it in the beginning and the way we perceive the person we love. Loving someone doesn’t invigorate that many chemical changes in our bodies. So, falling in love at first sight is not a big possibility according to the expert. Attraction, on the other hand, can happen spontaneously between two people who have just met.

Anthropological Take On Love At First Sight

 According to the biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher, love at first sight can be a possibility but it depends on the explanation of ‘love’. Our brain works in systems. We have an anger system that can make us instantly angry, then we have a system of fear to trigger instant fear in us. These systems were installed in us millions of years ago. Similarly, people can feel the rush of emotions for an individual after meeting them for the first time if their primitive mating instincts get triggered. But this kind of love cannot be equated with the love that has seen years of emotions and that combines love and attachment. But ‘love at first sight’ can be explained as a primitive system of mating urgency that used to get triggered in primitive humans and animals. This helped them in pursuing that one individual that they see fit to mate with. This is a primal instinct that we humans still carry in us.

The Difference Between Men And Women Falling In Love

According to many relationship experts, men and women fall in love very differently. Men tend to fall in love lot faster than women. When a man walks into a room, he can instinctively feel an attraction towards a certain woman which would solely be triggered by the visual stimuli. Men after weeks start thinking about the other aspects like depth of character, humor, emotional availability to decide about the future of the relationship. Women also go through the same surge of emotions that comes with attraction but they quickly go through the other criteria as well to decide about the future. But this theory is highly subjective and is bound to vary with individuals. Falling in love can never be explanation-bound. It is an emotion. This emotion is subjective as it is based on individual experiences. We all cannot feel this emotion the same way with our varied individualistic emotional constructs.
So, if you have found love, hold on to it. And if you are looking for love, then keep an open mind. You never know what can trigger your emotional construct.