love at first sight--destructive love myth #3

You can't blame this on Austen. Or on the Bronte sisters. I think this may have to go back to Tristan and Isolde with their love potion. Or in some versions, without a love potion. Shakespeare uses it in Romeo and Juliet, but he doesn't take it seriously. Well, he does, but he plays with it, too. He uses all the steam from love at first sight and then shows how that turns out. They may be in love. They may truly be in love. But it doesn't matter because society won't let their love last. I think I might like the Sassy Gay Friend's ending better, however.

The problems with love at first sight? Oh, let me count the ways.

1. All you find out from first sight is whether or not you are physically attracted to someone. OK, yes, it is important to be physically attracted. Yes, there is at least a reciprocity involved here, so that it isn't just about the man's attraction to the woman and her passivity (since, originally, marriage was simply a way to bind a woman to a man who paid her father). But I think we can do better than love at first sight these days.

2. Physical attraction does not equal compatibility. I sometimes read romances where I am seriously thinking about serial killers when I read the love at first sight opening scenes. It creeps me out. What someone seems to be is not what someone is. If you haven't been mistaken by your first impression before, girl, you need to get out more. Yes, sometimes your first impression is right and your subconscious is processing details that your conscious mind can't. But you have time to think this through.

3. I sometimes think that love at first sight is simply code for a woman's sexual feelings which we are not allowed to talk about directly. Do you know what I mean? She is in love, not in lust, so that's all right. She doesn't have to talk about sexual feelings at all. It's pure because this is true love. Yada yada. I don't see any reason that even clean romances can't admit that there is such a thing as sexual attraction. I don't see any reason that in this day and age women should have to disguise how they feel. Even teen women. I'm not saying they should act on it. In fact, I am saying exactly the opposite. Think first, eh? Let's call things by their proper names, though. That way we see them more clearly.

4. How superficial can you get? I remember I had an argument with my now husband, then boyfriend about this in college. He claimed that no one would marry someone they weren't physically attracted to. I argued that physical attraction was not the most important thing on my list. This is one of the reasons that I find book heroes very "hot." There is no physical attraction to them, no matter how careful the physical description of them might be. I am attracted to who I imagine they are through their words and actions. I think this is true in real life. I might be willing to admit some variation in this between women and between women and men. But in fifty years, who do you want? The nice guy or the one who looked great way back when?

5. I don't like to believe that our lives are solely determined by our biology. I may be wrong on this ultimately, but it's a fantasy that I think is helpful in living life. Pheromones may be the real reason we end up with someone, but surely whether we stay with that person is all about choice. You choose to keep working at it. You choose to keep falling back in love when you could get out and fall in love with someone else. (By the way, this makes me want to talk about a whole genre of fiction I think we need in America today--the married romance, stories about couples who are about to break apart and then fall back in love. But that is another post.)

6. It's about power, isn't it? Getting the hottest guy makes a girl more powerful than her rivals, in high school and in many parts of life. I think that may be a significant part of the reason that this myth exists. There's this element of looking over your shoulder to make sure the other girls are watching to see who you snagged. It gives you status, and status only matters when you are above someone else. So it's not about the love at first sight guy at all. It's about the other girls who want him as much as you do.