By: Haja Hawa Koroma
It’s common to hear stories of people who claim to have experienced “love at first sight.” It creates the ideas of destiny, soul mates, true love, and “the one.” But can you really fall in love with someone you’ve just met? And are you certain that those feelings really lead to a happy and healthy relationship?
Love at first sight is what fairytales are made of and who wouldn’t want that for their own life? But, here is the big question, is love at first sight real?
Sometimes the answer to this question depends on who you ask. For some people, they might say yes because they think they have experienced it. But in actuality, the idea of ‘love, at first sight, is an ‘attraction at first sight.
Physical attraction and a spark might be the way that many relationships begin, but it’s not the same as real love. People who feel they have fallen in love, at first sight, could be experiencing a desire and pull towards the other person, but it’s still much different than love. Relationships can begin on these factors, which might make you feel like you are in love, but real love requires a lot more than physical attraction. It is built on trust, understanding, and commitment. It can only be built over time and through shared experiences. Thus, you can only fall in love with someone when you would have gotten to truly know them and that doesn’t happen in a day cause it’s a gradual process.
This entire concept of love, at first sight, is mere, an attraction at first sight, because when you are just seeing a person for the first time, you only like what you see and that is attraction, there is not much to see at that moment that will make you fall entirely in love with that person. Essentially what you love is the looks of the other person, not necessarily the person themselves. However, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so what one person sees as beautiful will not be so for another since everyone has their different taste in what attracts them.
This is why it’s mostly men that claim to have experienced falling in love at first sight than women, because men are visual creatures, they get more easily attracted by what they see than women. Because of this, they are usually just after that person they are attracted to, to quench their desires and not because they intend to love them. In most cases what makes a man stay in that relationship and end up falling in love with the woman is when he gets to know her.
This indicates that their love is being confused with desire. The sexual desire they feel for an attractive woman leads them to believe they are in love. Since so many of the feelings of love, at first sight, are based on imagination, the feeling is incredibly unreliable.
This is why the more you learn about the person your loving feelings may either grow or might quickly fade. This is because character plays a large role in what love and relationships are based on. You might love the way the person looks, but hate their character, or lack of. This is one reason why you shouldn’t place too much emphasis on the feelings of love at first sight. So, never forget that the word should be ‘attraction at first sight’ not ‘Love at first sight.
