What say you?
Does it exist or does it not?
I say no. It doesn’t.
And I might get absolutely slaughtered by the comment I’m about to make. Like, totally clobbered. So imagine me saying this from behind my couch.
But for me, love at first sight didn’t even exist with my child. Unlike the movies you see in Hollywood, I was not a teary-eyed mother overcome with emotion and love for my wee little babe. I was more like, “Thank you Lord that this kid is out of me and holy crow, he looks like my brother.”
I was enamored by my little one. And excited for what was to come. But I don’t think I fell in love with him the first time I saw his squishy, Elmer Fudd nose. He still felt like such a stranger.
It was over the course of sleepless nights and bare-skinned cuddles and his little fist wrapping around my finger and first smiles and all the other million things a mother experiences in that first month of motherhood that made me fall in love with my son.
So I’ll ask it again.
Let’s Talk: What say you? Does love at first sight exist?
*photo by Maxybon
Ha! That’s funny. I was the same way with my daughter. I KNEW I would come to love her (and I adore her in a way I couldn’t even have expected) but the first two months, there was definitely a part of me that was like, What did I do?! (This may have been helped along because she didn’t sleep for more than two hours at a time for a long time.)
I don’t believe in love at first sight, but before I met my husband, my great love until then was someone I met and pretty much instantly clicked with. I do think that happens. I knew in about a week I was in love (and that was SO not typical for me) and I could have married him, but the timing was just not right. But it all worked out and we both ended up happy. That said, it really was true love and it was *almost* at first sight.
Well, if you want to get technical about the definition of “love,” then maybe not. But otherwise, I’d say… YES! I first glimpsed my hubby across a scuba dive boat, standing there in his wetsuit. I said to myself, “Now THAT is the man for me.” 17 years later, I still think that.
That is 100% awesome.
Your honesty is so refreshing, Katie!
Honestly, Katie, I think it depends on the person if love at first sight is possible. Certain personalities wouldn't allow it, yet others would, I suspect.
I was too exausted at the birth of all three of my girls to fall in love immediately, but I knew I loved them all nine months of my pregnancies. The fallin in love part came when the doctors and nurses finally let us be together alone and I could look into their so squinted eyes and marvel in the fact that they were a part of me and nothing would ever change that.
i was going to go more for the lust at first site….but infatuation sounds so much more Christian. 🙂
OK, Erica beat me to it, so I'll just say "ditto" to what she said. =)
I believe in infatuation at first sight…or being in love with love.
I think true, forever love takes some time, but how long that time is depends on the people, I guess.
Agreed. My first thought when they handed me my son … "Yikes, I hope all that nasty yellow gick comes off." Then, almost immediately afterward, "I hope they keep giving me painkillers now that the birth is over." It wasn't until several hours, some morphine, and a bath (for him), later than I warmed up to him.
As for romance, well, I was in lust at first sight with my hubby, but love? For me, it's not stagnant enough to just 'happen'. It's something that grows and changes and (hopefully) strengthens over time. And I'm glad. If it truly were just a 'moment,' like described in some novels and movies, it would be a lot easier to undo than years of memories and experiences.
Ruth – you're right. I never really thought about that. But I can't say it doesn't exist. Especially for something as hard-to-pin-down as "love". I can only say that based on my definition of love, it's never happened to me.
Plus, I shouldn't say it doesn't exist across the board because it happened when Isaac saw Rebecca for the first time.
Thanks for adding to the conversation!
I love reading everybody's thoughts and opinions!
It's interesting to me how people take their own experience as the definitive answer to everyone else's experience.
You ask a question like Do You Believe In Love At First Sight? and what you get are people stating that they do or do not believe it across the board, for all people.
I'm really sick of people telling me that love at first sight doesn't exist when I've experienced it.
I'm sick of people saying it must be lust. Don't think that I'm too stupid to know the difference.
I believe in love at first sight because it has happened to me. Others don't believe in love at first sight because it has not happened to them.
It's sad to me, though, that people who have not experienced it insist on saying that it cannot exist.
Romantic love? Well, I don't think there's love at first sight. Lust? Yes. Perhaps a connection? Possibly. But love? No.
As for my kids, with my first, my daughter, the bond, the love, was instant. My son arrived 13 1/2 months later. With him, it wasn't instant. Perhaps it was my experience (not a bad birth, but my only babysitter for my daughter, mom, had already missed her flight because he was two weeks late, failed induction, off to a bigger hospital where everything was so . . . clinical and I spent the entire pregnancy stressing how I was going to handle both of them), but I was just so happy to have him out of me. He was foreign to me, but I felt guilt. I loved him, but I didn't have those warm, mommy feelings that I had with my daughter.
I did fall in love with my kids at first sight, which is odd for a grumpy stuck-in-the-head type of person. With my husband, I sort of knew we were going to get married before we ever dated, but it wasn't love at first sight, just a kind of knowing.
I agree with the different levels of love thing.
I think that there was a special connection with my husband when we met. With my two babies I was excited to meet them and enjoyed looking at all their little fingers and toes and the little faces that they would make but I was mostly just relieved that the pregnancy was over.
I think though that deep and lasting love only comes as we share memories and serve each other through the ups and downs.
I've heard many times of mothers that don't fall in love with their babies in the first instant. My personal theory is that there's so much fear about what comes next and how you are going to care for this helpless creature that it crowds out the feelings of love!
However, I have experienced love at first sight in a man. People roll their eyes, say "Hurmph, lust maybe." But no, it wasn't lust. It was the most pure love I've ever experienced and it happened the moment I looked at him.
He was leading a Christian campus thing when I first started college. I was mesmerized by his energy. We became good friends and never dated, though I loved him completely and deeply and twelve years later I still do, though he isn't in my life so much anymore.
I won't slaughter you! I agree. Infatuation happens, lust happens… but love? Then I thought: But God didn't have to learn tolove us… He loved us perfectly… then I remembered He loved us BEFORE He saw us, so even that doesn't work as an excuse.
Maybe it's more of a choice. Like we choose to forgive when we don't feel like it, maybe we can choose to love a person from the beginning?
Oh, that's a tough one. I think I agree with you on that one. I don't think I fell in love with my kiddos the first time I saw them either. I had all sorts of thoughts – especially with this last little one because of how the delivery went. So…mostly it was just relief and awe that I had done it again (somehow) and greatfulness that she was healthy. But when that full, deep love finally develops it's crazy to think we didn't have it from the beginning because of how strong it is 🙂
Love all these thoughts about love at first sight. I guess it all depends on how we define love.
It's pretty hard to do that though, isn't it???
I like how the Greek and Hebrew people have different words for love.
With my daughter? Yes, at first sight. Also with my three grandsons. Of course, I hadn't carried a growth in my belly all those months to get any of them there.
With a lover? I think perhaps lust at first sight is more likely, with love growing from getting to know the person.
I'm picturing you glancing over the top of a couch. LOL I'll be honest too, since you are, when I had my first baby I loved her but I was so overwhelmed I wouldn't call it the "love at first sight" in fact my first words out were, "Ooooh, she has the cone head." I was disappointed. BUT, when I had baby #2, I was smitten off the bat. Not because he was a prettier baby and it wasn't that the labor was easier, because my epidural wore off. Yeah. Yeah it did. I think I was more relaxed and prepared for what had been going on. And I could fall in love much easier.
I don't know about falling in love at first sight with the opposite sex. I know you can be super attracted and then all the hormones go crazy making you feel that way, but I wasn't in love with my hubby at first. 🙂 Great post today.
I think it depends on the kind of love you're talking about. The Greeks had four different words for love. Honestly, I loved my babes before they were even born. I felt like we connected while they were still in my womb.
I do think that love in all its forms is a process. You can feel it in the beginning, but it takes time to become stronger, really cemented, and even now knowing how much I love my husband, I feel I could still learn to love him more. Emotions can grow like plants or people, I think. It takes nurturing and great care to cultivate the positive ones and eliminate the weedy ones.
This is a very roundabout way of saying, yes, I believe in true love at first sight, but to make it deep and lasting takes time and effort.
Love that Elmer Fudd description.
For me, I think there can be a knowing/comfort/trust feeling at first sight. But love, not so sure.
Excellent question…Now that's one to grow on (do you remember those?).
I fell in love with my squishy faced girls right away, goop & all (and I'm not really an overly maternal gal). It must have been the hormones. Only kidding. I still love them. Good thing, right?
~ Wendy
they all kind of look like Elmer Fudd, don't they!? It's weird… with my oldest, it was love at first sight, but not with my second and third. I felt like I had no idea who they were.
I don't think romantic love at first sight exists. How could it? Love is so much bigger and deeper (and dare I say, HARDER?). How could a fleeting moment encompass all of that? It doesn't even sound romantic to me… give me the old couple who has been through the trenches and still hold hands – that is what brings me to tears.
I do believe in love at first sight but that's different than the love you feel after getting to know someone. I agree with love is a decision not an emotion. though it's easy to confuse the two.
I love it…"imagine me saying this from behind my couch." Ha.
I don't have kids yet, so I'm not sure on the baby front…but on the husband front, I was actually friends with my husband for years before we started dating. And I never ONCE thought of him like that until he asked me out. And then it took me a few months to be convinced I felt anything romantic for him.
To me, when I read stories or see movies about people falling in love "at first sight," I tend to not believe it. I know there can be attraction at first sight, and maybe occasionally God gives us a confidence of some sort like Heather talked about, but most of the time, love takes time to blossom.
Love is an action, not a feeling. So I think true, deep love takes time to take root, and it takes work for it to grow.
Just my two cents. 🙂
I know that what you experienced is so completely normal. I've known friends who had such a horrific delivery they didn't want to hold their babies at first. They went on to love their children very much, but the beginning was rough.
Me? I'm a love at first sight kind of girl. Well, maybe it's always been love at second sight. I met my husband on the day of the KY Derby, and by the end of that day, I knew he was my guy. He lived in Oregon at the time, I lived in KY, so there were definitely obstacles. But…
As far as by sweet babies, I had C-sections, so the first sight wasn't the best, but by the time I held them for the first time, I wondered if my whole reason for exsistence was to bring those beautiful creatures into the world.
LOL Katie, thanks for your honesty. I'll be the first to comment with a big "me too" as far as instant love with my kids. Especially my son, the second born. When he came out, he had a head of dark curly hair and my first thought (this is not a joke; you can ask my husband), was that he looked like Kramer from Seinfeld. Not only that, but he also looked slightly hispanic, and neither me nor my husband are of that ethnicity, so I felt like I had given birth to a stranger! Meeting my husband for the first time, however.. I don't know.. I'd say it was a little bit of love at first sight. *sigh* it's the romantic in me, I can't help it.