Science says: love at first sight does not exist
Love at first sight: a phenomenon I have never experienced myself. At most, I have felt it with actors, but you can't do much with that. It always seems so romantic in movies: two people bump into each other on the street, a take-away coffee spills over one of them, and then (unfortunately always) the woman is suddenly very angry. But not a minute later, when she looks the instigator in the eyes, she is suddenly head over heels in love. Huh? With the one who just threw coffee over her? How can that be? Personally, I would still be furious all day at someone who would do such a thing. And does love at first sight even exist? I think I am a bit skeptical about this.
The answer is: no. According to experts, you can feel a tremendous attraction, but there is no talk of love. Psychologist and relationship expert Niloo Dardashti says the following about this: ‘Feeling a super strong connection when you meet someone for the first time really exists. That feeling is certainly possible. This reaction you feel in your body is just not real love. When you talk about love, you talk about intimacy and truly loving someone, despite their flaws. You can't really feel those things when you meet someone for the first time because you don't know them.’
What you do feel is a tremendous attraction that people often confuse with true love. Of course, this feeling of infatuation can be transformed into real love, but it can just as easily lead nowhere. Psychologist Huibrecht Boluijt describes this phenomenon that is confused with love as ‘attraction at first sight’, or: ‘lust at first sight’. This mainly involves desire and sex drive. This is all purely based on each other's appearance and says nothing about whether you are intellectually matched. By the way, you can have this feeling for multiple people at the same time, so let that be the hard evidence that this cannot be called true love.
Okay, nothing more than lust then. But why do we see in almost every movie that people stay together forever after such a meeting? That doesn't make any sense, does it? The chance is quite large that during a date you find out that you do not share the same humor or interests at all, and then you might as well leave as quickly as possible. Alright, life is not a romantic comedy, that is clear, but it would be nice if we sometimes got to see in movies that there is lust at first sight instead of love at first sight. New proposal: after the infamous coffee moment, a one-night stand takes place, but there is no exceptional emotional connection: both continue with their lives. On to the next lust at first sight. That should be possible, right?
Long story short: love at first sight does not exist. Finding someone instantly attractive does exist. Of course, you could say afterward, when you are still together years after such a lust at first sight meeting, that it was love at first sight. This is not entirely true, but it does make the story a lot more romantic.
