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When It’s Really True Love, You Will Know It the Moment You Meet the Other Person

When you watch a romantic film, you see it.

When you listen to a romantic song, you hear about it.

When you are single and lonely, you dream about it.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

I think we all secretly believe in ‘love at first sight,’ the idea that if it is really true love, you will know it the moment you meet the other person. Oh, there may be other kinds of love, but according to this Love Myth, true love will strike you like lightning.

I remember first hearing this myth as a young girl, and I longed to be swept away during a powerfully romantic moment in which I’d look into a man’s eyes and know instantly, and without a doubt, that this was my lifelong soulmate! I dreamed about ‘some enchanted evening,’ as the famous ballad from the play and movie South Pacific described it, when I would ‘find [my] true love … across a crowded room.’ Anything less than this kind of intense emotional recognition seemed a pale imitation of what I was sure true love should feel like.

You can call it ‘love at first sight’ or ‘instant chemistry,’ but the possible problems are the same if you believe in Love Myth #2:

1 You dwell on the intense connection or chemistry and avoid examining the rest of the relationship.

Skip, thirty-two, is a very successful entrepreneur, who met Marcia, a twenty-seven-year-old accountant, at a wedding. ‘My first. thought when I saw her,’ he told me, ‘was, ‘God, she is beautiful,’ and my second thought was, ‘I’m going to marry this woman.’ That night was probably the most romantic night of my life. It was a beautiful summer evening, and we danced together on an outdoor patio under the stars. Marcia even caught the bridal bouquet, and everyone kidded us about being next.

‘We dated each other for the next ten months, and then she told me she wanted me to make more of a commitment—in other words, to propose to her. I told her I needed more time, that I didn’t want to rush things, but she kept pressuring me until one day she gave me an ultimatum: marry her or she’d leave.

‘I knew something was wrong, because I just wasn’t happy, but whenever I’d question whether I was making a mistake, a little voice in my head would say, ‘How could she be wrong for you if you had ‘that feeling’ when you first saw her?’ I couldn’t answer that question, and I kept remembering how crazy I’d been about Marcia in the beginning. I told myself that my concerns were born from my unwillingness to grow up. So I married her.’

‘Are you still married?’ I asked Skip.

‘No,’ he answered with a sad grimace. ‘I left Marcia after two years. The truth was, our relationship didn’t live up to that first magical evening—Marcia is beautiful, but she is also very angry. She controlled me with her rages, and she drank too much, which made the blowups all too frequent. I put off breaking up with her for much longer than I should have, because I kept doubting my own feelings and thinking about how perfect things were when we met. I didn’t want to see the truth; the romantic picture was much nicer.’

Skip was a victim of Love Myth #2—he hid behind his intense first impressions of Marcia, and used them to fuel his fantasy of their relationship, rather than facing the reality of how unhappy he really was.

ARE YOU A ‘LOVE-AT-FIRST-SIGHT JUNKIE’?

2. You get addicted to flashy beginnings and miss opportunities for real, lasting love.

Alexia was a petite, striking thirty-six-year-old woman who owned a children’s clothing store. She came to me to decide what to do about her relationship with Kent. ‘I’ll tell you right away that in the past, my relationships haven’t been great,’ Alexia began. ‘I seem to have been attracted to these flashy, exciting men who end up leaving me or cheating on me or somehow hurting me. These relationships always seem so powerful when they start, and I feel so wildly and desperately in love, and then—POW!—I get hurt.

‘Last year I decided to swear off men entirely, and then I met Kent. He is the cousin of a good friend of mine, and a bunch of us started spending time together on the weekends. I liked Kent from the moment I met him, but never considered dating him because he wasn’t ‘my type.’ We became really good friends, talking for hours on the phone at night, sharing things with one another we’d never told anyone else. It got to the point where we called each other several times a day and spent most of our free evenings together.

‘Suddenly one night while we were driving back from seeing a movie, Kent leaned over and kissed me on the lips. At first I was shocked and thought, ‘You shouldn’t be kissing him—he’s your friend!’ But then I started getting into the kiss and realized that I liked it. Kent looked at me and confessed that he’d been wanting to kiss me for months and that he thought he was falling in love with me.’

‘How did you feel about that?’ I asked Alexia.

‘Totally confused. Excited, frightened, all mixed up. Kent was supposed to be just a friend, not a lover. He’s not the kind of guy that I picture myself with.’

‘And what kind of guy is that?’

Alexia looked a little embarrassed as she replied sarcastically, ‘Oh, you know, the kind that sweeps me off my feet and then knocks me down again.’

‘Alexia,’ I answered, ‘your relationship with Kent sounds healthy. I don’t think you’ve ever known what healthy love is supposed to feel like.’

Alexia believed so strongly in the Love Myth of love-at-first-sight that she was invalidating her growing feelings for Kent. She couldn’t imagine that love could be real if it didn’t hit her over the head in the first five minutes of the relationship. Like many ‘love-at-first-sight junkies,’ Alexia was addicted to the instant high of infatuation and therefore couldn’t even recognize the real love that had developed in her relationship. She almost sabotaged the first healthy romance in her life.

Being a ‘love-at-first-sight junkie’ is one of the most deadly ways in which we lower our ‘Love IQ.’

‘LOVE-AT-FIRST-SIGHT JUNKIES’ OFTEN LOOK FOR ALL THE WRONG QUALITIES IN A MATE AND OVERLOOK THE RIGHT QUALITIES.

WHAT IS LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT?

Just what is it that you feel when you meet someone and have that instant feeling of falling in love? If it isn’t love at first sight, what is it?

Lust-At-First-Sight. You experience raw, sexual chemistry between you and another person, and assign more emotion to the bond than there actually is. You can’t stop thinking about the person, not because you are in love with them, but because you are turned on by them. Intense physical attraction, especially with someone who fits your mental picture of the ‘perfect’ partner, can easily be mistaken for love, especially if you are looking for an instant high. But the high of lust-at-first-sight is often followed by the low of the disappointment you feel when the relationship doesn’t turn out the way you hoped it would. (See Chapter Four for more about ‘Lust Blindness.’)

Infatuation with their image. Sometimes when you think you are falling in love with someone, you are actually ‘in love’ with their image: how they look; their profession; how much money they have; the car they drive; the things they’ve done in their life. You build a fantasy relationship in your head, telling yourself, ‘My boyfriend is a doctor,’ or ‘I’m dating a woman with the perfect body,’ and thus you ignore the real person.

In spite of these dangers, is it possible to feel at the moment you meet someone that this is the perfect partner for you, and to be correct? What about those couples married for thirty years who say they knew they were right for one another on their first date? Wasn’t that love at first sight? I like to think that they experienced a powerful attraction and emotional connection that grew into a strong and successful relationship. They recognized something special in one another at ‘first sight,’ but the true love developed over time.

Here’s the reality about Love Myth #2:

IT TAKES JUST A MOMENT TO EXPERIENCE INFATUATION, BUT TRUE LOVE TAKES TIME.

Imagine sitting in a cabin on a cold, snowy night. You decide to build a fire to keep yourself warm. You have a choice of using newspapers for the fire, or logs. If you know anything about fire, you know the answer to this puzzle—the newspaper would create a big blaze quickly but would die out just as quickly. The logs would take longer to catch, but would burn slowly and steadily for a very long time.

I’ve seen so many people, including myself, make the mistake of looking for that instant blaze at the beginning of a relationship rather than looking for a partner with whom they can build a solid and lasting relationship. I’m not saying you can’t have both, just as you can use newspaper and logs to build a strong fire. But if you have found yourself choosing inappropriate partners over and over again, perhaps you’d be better off looking for Mr. (or Ms.) Log instead of Ms. or Mr. Flammable!

HOW I ALMOST MISSED OUT ON THE BEST RELATIONSHIP OF MY LIFE

In case you haven’t guessed by now, I was a ‘love-at-first-sight-junkie’ myself. The more infatuated I felt with someone, the more credibility I gave my feelings about him and my new relationship. I’ll share more about my own mistakes in the following chapters of this book, but first let me tell you about how my search for instant chemistry came close to ruining my chances for true romantic happiness.

About four years ago I was in the process of ending an extremely painful relationship with a man I had loved for a long time. I was fortunate enough to have two best friends, both male, named Kevin and Jeffrey. I originally met Kevin and Jeffrey through my seminar work, and they eventually became facilitators in my organization. Through their support I found the courage to admit to myself that I wasn’t getting what I wanted in my relationship, and to face the fact that I needed to leave.

During the many months over which I came to terms with my decision, Jeffrey and I became very close. We talked every day on the phone. We worked on many projects together. We joked around that we were really like brother and sister, since we look alike. I knew women really found Jeffrey attractive, although I told myself he wasn’t my ‘type,’ and he would often kid me and say if he could find a woman like me, he’d take her. I found myself making excuses to see or talk to him, but I told myself it was just because I was going through such a hard time. I noticed we were finding more reasons to hug or touch one another, but I convinced myself it was because we felt so safe together.

One evening as Kevin, Jeffrey, and I were in a meeting discussing some seminar business, Kevin looked at us and said, ‘What’s going on with the two of you?’

‘What do you mean? Nothing’s going on,’ I responded quickly.

‘Well, it’s just that when you are together, you look like you are in love,’ he answered.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Jeffrey. ‘We are just great friends. You can’t actually believe that we would be any more than that, can you?’

‘All I know is that when I’m around you, it sure feels like more than friends,’ Kevin said with a smile. ‘Look, I’m going to leave the room now, so you can both talk about it.’ And with that, Kevin walked out.

Jeffrey and I sat across from each other on the couch in silence. For a moment we looked into each other’s eyes, and then we both started to cry, for Kevin had put something into words that we had both avoided talking about, or even admitting to ourselves: We were indeed falling in love.

Jeffrey reached out and took my hands. ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ he said. ‘We are supposed to be just friends.’

‘Maybe it is just something temporary,’ I answered in a frightened voice. ‘Maybe we just think we feel this way, but it will pass.’

And in that moment, I truly wanted to believe that my feelings for Jeffrey would fade, because I couldn’t totally accept the fact that I loved him. Dozens of questions forced their way into my mind all at once: If I loved him, why hadn’t I known about it until tonight? How could I feel so close to someone I hadn’t been attracted to initially? Since it hadn’t been love at first sight, did that mean the relationship would be passionless?

Like many ‘Love-at-First-Sight junkies,’ I didn’t trust my feelings for someone unless they hit me over the head. I looked for all the wrong signals to determine whether I was ‘in love’—drama, intensity, fear of loss or abandonment, extreme highs and lows—all signs of an unhealthy relationship. For the first time in my life I had developed an emotional connection with a man based on friendship, trust, openness, safety, consistency, and true caring, and I hadn’t even recognized it because it felt too peaceful to be love.

For several months I struggled with my emotions. One day I’d want to go ahead with the relationship, and the next day I’d decide that I was kidding myself and should break it off. There were many moments in which I questioned whether my feelings for Jeffrey were strong enough, all because the relationship had crept up on me rather than arriving all at once. I put poor Jeffrey through hell with my lack of certainty and came close to losing him for good. It took me almost a year to let go of my Love Myth about the way we should have met and the way I should have felt, and to finally appreciate the depth and the joy of how I did feel. That was four years ago, and looking back, I thank God that Jeffrey was so patient and that I didn’t throw away the best thing that ever happened to me. Instead I threw away the Love Myth that had gotten me into one dysfunctional relationship after another.

A first impression of someone is not enough to determine whether he or she will be a healthy and loving partner. You need a second, third, fourth, and fifth impression. You need time to discover someone’s character, not just their exterior.

Remember: Falling in love is the easy part, but building a healthy relationship takes hard work.