Love at First Sight: Real or Unreal?
By Ava Foulk '23
Do you believe in love at first sight? To be completely honest, I’m a skeptic. I think the rom com moments, while undoubtedly adorable, are a bit far fetched in reality. Surely, people don’t meet someone’s gaze from across a crowded room and know that they will spend the rest of their life with that person. One can’t develop the deep, intimate feelings associated with love in one little glance. Even in rom coms, there is the montage of the couple getting to know each other better, developing inside jokes, and uncovering one’s foibles. Only after that montage is there the true love moment between the characters. Therefore, true, unconditional love forming in one instance is seemingly improbable, yet science concludes that the feelings associated with “love” at first sight can indicate a budding potential for a happy, healthy long term relationship.
The universal symbol of love is a red heart. However, it isn’t our heart that controls our feelings of love, but rather our brain. Our brain produces chemical signals that elevate our heart rate, make our palms sweat, muscles shake, etc. These chemical signals correspond to three major variations of romantic love: lust, attraction, and attachment. The chemicals associated with each shed light on the biological components of love at first sight. Below is a brief description of each category:
Lust describes one’s sexual desire. It is an ingrained, evolutionary reaction that drives not just humans but all animals to reproduce. The release of estrogen and testosterone, hormones present in both women and men, in the hypothalamus section of one’s brain increases one’s sexual desire.
Attraction is similar to lust but driven by chemical pathways related to reward behaviors. Attraction is associated with the release of dopamine and norepinephrine in the hypothalamus, which makes us feel happy and excited, and the decreased production of serotonin. In high amounts, dopamine and norepinephrine also cause a loss of appetite and trouble sleeping.
Attachment defines one’s loyalty and dependency on another person and is characterized by the release of oxytocin and vasopressin in the hypothalamus.
Image Credit: Flint Rehab
So, one can experience feelings of love at first sight, which is mainly the result of the release of dopamine and norepinephrine as well testosterone and estrogen in some cases. There is a purely biological response related to ‘love at first sight,’ but more accurately, one is experiencing lust and attraction at first sight, not love. Love is a complicated, intricate emotion, and science indicates that it does not develop instantaneously. However, feeling like you are falling in love at first sight strengthens the possibility that two people will develop strong feelings of love for one another in time. So, yes, falling in love at first sight is technically real, but it is not as deep and monumental as the rom com fanatics might make it out to be.
Sources:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/meet-catch-and-keep/201801/is-love-first-sight-real
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/love-actually-science-behind-lust-attraction-companionship/