love at first sight or a moment of potential

Stories and songs make much of the idea of love at first sight. But what I’ve found most amazing, even miraculous, is the potential in that moment you first meet a future lover or partner. I keep recalling the day I met my husband with a sense of absolute wonder. I had no idea that this was the person who would be my perfect match and my future life partner. He was a complete unknown. Given how compatible we are, it almost seems as if there should have been some indication. The thunderbolt. A flash mob singing the hallelujah chorus. But there was nothing theatrical, just attraction, interest, and curiosity.

I’m so glad that our relationship is unfolding just the way it is. I think of love at first sight as being a kind of assumption of knowing or even faith, which implies a lack of curiosity, a lack of openness to the possibilities. It almost seems as if you’re putting that person in a box before even knowing them. Isn’t it best to make as few assumptions as possible, especially while you’re getting to know someone?

The experience of falling a little more in love all the time is just amazing. The ever-increasing, ever-escalating emotion and attachment, the strengthening of our bond over time… it’s beautiful. The more I get to know him, the more comfortable he is around me, the more he trusts me, the more I love him. When I show him some new less-than-stellar aspect of myself and he accepts it, my heart breaks open just a little more. With each new revelation of some aspect of his character, of his self, of his thoughts, I have more to love.

While there are many moments of overwhelming hormones and emotions, of love exploding like a volcano, I think one of the best things about our relationship is how it keeps building over time, like layers of lava creating new land.

falling in love

“They sat together in the park

as the evening sky grew dark.

She looked at him and he felt a spark

tingle to his bones...”

-Bob Dylan

When I fell in love with T, it felt just like that. We were at his ranch in the mountains above the Big Sur coast, so far out in the wilderness that no lights from other houses could be seen, no city skyglow to obscure the stars. We were together on a redwood slab bench out under the stars, which were piercingly bright. At the moment I fell in love with him, if felt like one of the stars had fallen from the heavens and was drilling into the center of my chest. It was an immensely pleasurable and powerful sensation, like a burning ember hitting me in the sternum and burning straight into me, directly to my spine, slowly illuminating my entire chest cavity with warmth and dazzling, expanding starlight. I’d never felt anything like it.

“That’s a very mysterious thing, that electric thing that happens.”

- Joseph Campbell

I had a similar experience when I fell in love with R, that first magic week we spent together. We were lying together and alternating long periods of kissing and caressing with what I would call deep soul gazing. We were staring into each other’s eyes, and a wider area on that same place on my chest lit up, filling my chest cavity with that same beautiful spreading feeling of tingling warmth and light. The tingling warmth felt like it sank into the marrow of my bones, and then radiated out to the tips of my fingers and toes, to my nose and lips and earlobes, and up to the top of my head. I remember feeling that tingling, glowing wave of love expanding out from my chest, moving up my neck and face like a waterline. I felt like love was pouring out of my eyes for weeks afterwards.

"There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment."

- Sarah Dessen

I fell completely in love with E the first night we went to the hot springs together for the full moon. I’d felt little zings and zaps to my chest with him before. I knew I was falling in love with him. But that night at the hot springs, suddenly it felt like fireworks exploding in my chest, bright and white as the moon. It sizzled out to all my nerve endings, and up to the crown of my skull like white-hot bolts of lightning. I knew E much better than I’d known T or R at the moment love struck. I’d only known them a matter of days (though in both cases, we’d been together almost nonstop on those days). I think the depth of knowing with E increased the intensity of the experience.

Funny how every time has been a little different. But all three were head-over heels, ‘this is totally irrational and crazy but I don’t care’ loves. I still love all three of those men, but in very different ways. I have loved and do love other men, but only felt that earth-shaking, life-changing moment of it those three times.

I don’t think this is a universal experience, based on the few people I’ve asked. When people talk about “feeling that spark,” they seem to be referring to the feeling of sexual attraction more than anything else.

You know that feeling when you see someone and the attraction shocks you with its intensity, like a punch to the gut? Many people call it “love at first sight.” Personally, I think “lust at first sight” is more accurate. In The Godfather, Mario Puzo called it the “thunderbolt.” That’s the best one word description for that feeling I’ve ever seen. Sometimes it isn’t the first time you see someone, but rather the first time you see them smile. Or that first eye contact, the first moment of connection. The feeling might be more or less intense based on your hormone levels at the time and your instinctive response to the person’s appearance.

I once saw a drop-dead gorgeous man I’d never seen before at the grocery store and literally felt like I’d been zapped with electricity and punched in the gut all at once. It did hit me in the gut, not the chest. I think that might be an important distinction. The attraction I felt was so strong it shocked me, and yet I felt a sense of recognition, like I knew this man, had met him before. His face was so familiar to me. I actually gasped aloud. My heart leapt and started pounding and I felt myself flush from head to toe. I heard a buzzing in my ears. We made eye contact and smiles and and hellos were exchanged (with a deep blush on my part). We passed each other, and as I turned to say something more, I realized that I recognized the kid he had with him; that this was the recently divorced ex of a friend. So despite that feeling that some people would identify as “love at first sight,” I didn’t pursue a connection. Instead, I walked away. I’ve never experienced that degree of thunderbolt with anyone else.

I saw this man around town a few times since that day, and that intense attraction had completely vanished. It was so strange in it’s intensity partly because this man was not at all to my “taste” in looks. He had light-colored hair and light eyes and a very northern European look. I prefer a dark-eyed and dark-haired southern European, Middle Eastern or Asian look.

2017-02-03