But You Won’t Find it Staring at Your Phone!
It doesn’t matter how long you have been with your partner, there will always be times throughout your relationship when you are asked the question, “How did you meet?”. For some people, they enjoy getting the question. It is a chance to reminisce. A chance to remember the ‘good ole days’. A chance to think about what it was like to be in the first flushes of romance.
For me, it is always a tricky question. Because my first instinct is always to say, ‘Oh, it was love at first sight’ – but knowing that the very sentence sees most people recoil in disbelief or laugh out loudly, makes me think twice.
I have always been a hopeful (not hopeless) romantic. I love to see the good in people, always believe love will conquer evil, and I honestly truly believe that there is someone out there for everyone.
BUT – I am also a realist. Life gets in the way. We get in the way of ourselves. Most of the time I wander the street and wonder how any of these so called ‘millennials’ will ever find love. They are so busy staring at their phones that they don’t notice their soul mate walk past them in the street.
Don’t laugh! It can happen!
How did you meet your other half? Staring at a computer screen or pictures of food on Instagram?
I know that our world is changing. I know that finding love on social media or through dating apps is becoming more and more common. But what happened to finding love the old fashioned way? Eyes meeting across a dance floor or (like in my case) across a crowded room.
Are we now too busy in our tech driven lives to make room in our eye-line for love at first sight?
A new TV series has been brought to my attention. Okay, it might not be ‘new’, but it’s new to me (I don’t watch much TV, I binge watch Netflix instead).
Married at First Sight
What is this? Really? Are we that socially inept now that we are marrying at first sight on a TV show just to ‘find my potential soul mate’. These people are matched and married off. But that is NOT the way to find true love. That is an arranged marriage where people will have to work hard at the relationship to make it work. Props to those who do. That is dedication.
LOVE at first sight is totally different.
First of all, you have to have attraction.
Physical Attraction is one of the building blocks of a relationship. There has to be a degree of attraction. That doesn’t mean he has to be a tall dark Adonis, or she has to be a leggy busty blonde. Our brains are far more intelligent than we give them credit for sometimes. Your subconscious takes in small details of the other person and figures out in a hair’s breadth of a moment if that person is a match. Is this person too tall for me? Too dominating? Are they virile? Able to procreate? You may not think that you are thinking about all these questions when you first ‘see’ someone, but subconsciously your brain has already mapped out whether you will be an appropriate match.
Attraction is about more than ‘I like dark hair and blue eyes’ – attraction is so much more than surface mess. It’s much deeper than that.
Deep down, we are all mammals with an inbuilt primal response and need for survival. So most of the hard work is done in the DNA before we are even born.
So if that is the case, does ‘love at first sight’ truly exist? Isn’t it just a case of ‘we are a scientifically proven match for procreation’.
No, I don’t think so. Because we have evolved past mumbling cave men and women. We want and demand more out of life. We look for ambition and stability as well as safety and comfort. We have evolved. So our subconscious has evolved too. It still looks for safety, for all the markers of survival. But now it looks for more.
We have evolved enough to allow ourselves to notice love at first sight.
I was not looking for a relationship when I met my husband. Not at all. Nothing could have been further from my mind. I had just split from a messy relationship, and so had he. But I knew, the moment he walked into the room, that we would be together. I knew we would marry. I can’t tell you how, and I never uttered those words. It wasn’t like hearts and flowers floated above my head. Cupid didn’t strike me and I didn’t go gooey eyed. I just knew. Deep down I suddenly felt sure. Safe.
The day he proposed was not a shock. I didn’t have to think about it. I already knew. It was inevitable.
You see, chemicals have something to do with it. Science has a lot to do with it. DNA and survival instincts have a hand in it too. But so does evolution.
When you know, you know. But to know, you have to SEE. It’s not about scrolling through a hundred different pictures of good looking people on Tinder or Bumble. It’s not about speed dating to see how many men or women you can get through. It’s about opening your eyes. Looking around. Your soul mate is likely right there under your nose, but you are too busy searching the world for something better that you can’t see the wood for the trees.
In a world where the first thing we do in the morning is check our mobile phones to see what the weather will be like before opening the curtains to see for ourselves, put the phone down and look around. Put the laptop down and live a little. You never know who you might find crossing your path when you take the time to look up.
