In American films, love at first sight is the starting point of any good love story. Often between a man and a woman, often magical, rarely realistic and far too binary. But what actually happens for those who have experienced it in everyday life and not on these smokescreens?
We often speak of love at first sight as a moment so strong in a relationship, that it would spontaneously guarantee an eternal and unhindered love affair. We would meet and the simple glance at the other would trigger extreme sensations, like butterflies in the belly and other flowery expressions to speak of a simple attraction between two individuals. However, many romantic relationships do not start on a love affair and still work very well afterwards. Others are the result and end in a toxic and dangerous relationship. Still others are only struck by lightning after several years.
After #MeToo and the feminist awareness of the balance of power in heterosexual couples, it becomes important to analyze love at first sight to better renew it. Moreover, this renewal could perhaps involve a revaluation of friendly relations which, themselves, can be punctuated by love at first sight. We take stock of this myth.
Chemically, what happens during a lightning strike?
First of all, does it really exist, love at first sight? And if so, what is happening in our brain when a person’s mere gaze capsizes us? Sabou is a psycho-sexologist and she runs the sex education Instagram account Let’s Kick. She defines love at first sight as a kind of manifestation of the unconscious influenced by several factors. “First, there is a purely neurological element. The unconscious is involved a lot in the fact of analyzing, choosing the partner that interests us and that will be chemically compatible with us ”, she explains. In particular, she insists on the fact that the smell is “A predominant criterion” in this choice: “Our body will release hormones and smells that the other will feel. In the case of love at first sight, one feeds on the scent of the other. ” This would also be influenced by psychological models that we would have internalized as children. And of course, the portrayals we’ve seen in movies, on TV, or in books play a big part in what will or will not like us in someone.
But the psycho-sexologist weighs in by explaining that it is not so much our representations that are the most influential, but rather our predisposition to be attracted to a person. “To notice that we like someone, we have to be able to look at them”, she insists. Sabou explains that love at first sight also occurs when two individuals are in the same particular spatial area: “There are four distinct social zones: the public zone, the social zone, the personal zone and the intimate zone. However, it seems complicated to fall in love at first sight if you are in the public area all the time with the person concerned. ” This is why the psycho-sexologist compares him to “A flame between two matches” : for the flame to occur, there must be a certain proximity and for it to last, the fire must be maintained. This is why some people doubt not its existence, but rather the guarantee of instant love that one has attached to this experience.
The myth of love at first sight
Lola has experienced several types of love at first sight and, looking back, she has some doubts about the nature of this phenomenon.“I think it’s a social construction, especially in what we hear love at first sight in a heteronormous setting, explains the young woman. For me, love at first sight is not synonymous with spending your life afterwards with the person you fell in love with. Because in my opinion, there are a lot of individuals on earth who will correspond to what we want and we have, for that, a whole life to discover it ”. Alexandre shares these reservations and perceives love at first sight as an ephemeral sensation, linked to selfishness. He even comes to compare it to a drug: “You keep seeing the person to satisfy your addiction. And as soon as you stop taking it, it’s over ”. For him, it would be fairer to talk about “Sting”. Something of “Very fast, which hurts you for a few days and then goes away”. We are therefore far from the cornerstone necessary to build a love story.
This myth, which romantic films and hot books sell us, sometimes camouflages a more mundane reality – meeting at the coffee machine, one-night stand that ends in a more or less long relationship … – far from the ultra-romantic and very codified love at first sight to which we are accustomed, princess and prince charming way. Example when Lola met Clément and saw in him everything that society valued in a man. These chimeras quickly flew away: “I’m not sure my crush on him correlated with real envy. The reasons behind this feeling was to tell me that it was too good for me and that it represented what I had always dreamed of and that if I could have it, it was beautiful ”, she explains.
A violent expression that questions
That is why it is important to analyze this phenomenon as a construction. Because this rather powerful myth sometimes turns ordinary men into charming fictitious princes, which women do not really need or want. Worse, love at first sight can turn into a nightmare when it ends in a toxic relationship in which one of the two individuals feels trapped. Many women victims of domestic violence attest to the fact that their attacker justifies their acts by the fact that they are “too” in love, that they love “intensely”.
The very expression love at first sight contains a certain violence, which is nevertheless valued in our society. For Alexandre, it is “At the antipodes of love”. The young man is convinced that this one “Is the result of hard work. It’s a matter of choice and not just the result of an instinctive and impromptu feeling ”. According to him, this would explain why some people who have been friends for a long time end up falling in love with each other. The investment they have made in each other causes feelings to evolve beyond the friendly framework.
An elastic attraction that does not have to be instantaneous
This is why the idea of an immediate and intense moment seems wrong. It often happens that relationships evolve over time and give birth to love stories that we did not suspect. In fact, love at first sight can occur after a few months, or even a few years. This is what happened to Lola when, after three years of friendship with Juliette: she fell in love with her. “I felt a mixture of possessiveness and an overall urge to want to spend more time with her. My thoughts were directed only to that person, but not necessarily in some passionate and unhealthy love thing. It was rather in a peaceful form ”, she explains.
When analyzing this moment in her life, Lola specifies that love at first sight in romantic relationships between women is more difficult to discern than in heterosexual relationships: “We are not at all educated to spot romantic feelings in lesbian relationships. I think that there are a lot of so-called friendly fusional relationships between girls who are, in reality, love affairs, but we are not taught to identify those feelings ”. Hence the importance, for the young woman, of talking about love at first sight, in the plural, which would be varied moments, with different temporalities and directed towards different people.
Friendship sometimes as intense as love
Beyond love at first sight, friendly love at first sight also exists and is experienced in an equally intense way. What is astonishing in this kind of meeting is the relentless obviousness that one can feel. As if the person we had just met had been part of our life for a long time. This gives rise to amalgamated friendly relations in which we can forge very strong bonds of trust. Camille felt a friendly love at first sight when she met Deborah during her pre-return to L1. She describes the sensation she experienced as something very natural: “We played straight away at a level that I had never experienced before because I had friendships that were a bit complicated in high school. But there, I felt something super pure, without any ulterior motive, no bad feeling ”. This link is very precious in her eyes and she lives it in a very fusional way: “When I tell her that I love her, it’s just as strong as if I told a partner. Of course, it’s not quite the same because there aren’t the same things that come into play, but it’s really a feeling that I feel deep in my heart and in my body ”.
Clémentine, who did not believe in love at first sight whatever its form, has just met Julie, to whom the evidence has been obvious. Last September, during a trip to Montreal, she met the one who was in her eyes only the girlfriend of a friend of her boyfriend. But in one evening, the two women immediately “Matched”. “It was very fast. I’ve never had a friendship like this. And it was very painful when I left because I was leaving my boyfriend, but also Julie ”, she says. And when she describes in more detail what she felt, we can see that friendship is often experienced as intensely as love: “I really wanted to get to know her more, I was very interested in her and wanted to spend time with her. The fact that we see and talk to each other had almost become a need. Julie entered my life and I don’t want her to come out ”.
“If you don’t keep love at first sight, it can’t last”
Just as skeptical in love as in friendship, Alexandre concedes that friendships can also be created from love at first sight. “You get along well with the person, it works well, you don’t make any effort. It’s the opposite of love and that’s what makes the two compensate for each other in life ”. But he adds that it is important to invest the relationship afterwards by nurturing it with concrete actions so that the basic bond does not crumble over time. What Clémentine also says with her words: “Like any intense friendship from the start, I’m afraid it will fizzle out. If you don’t maintain this, it can’t last. It is necessary to know how to maintain the friendly bond so that the flame continues. It’s a daily job, otherwise it doesn’t make sense and it only remains fleeting ”. At a time when love is swiping and pop culture continues to sell us stereotypical relationships, you will understand: we will win everything by reinventing love at first sight.