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A burning feeling, wonderful pain, a clear confidence that we have found someone with whom we will be happy … Each (or almost each of us) would like to experience this. What if love at first sight isn’t just an accident?
“I know it’s childish, but I really want to experience this – at least once.” Elena at the age of 30 dreams of falling in love at first sight. She understands that overwhelming love does not guarantee either mutual fidelity or happiness. More than once she heard from her friends, read in magazines and novels that this feeling is illusory, and disappointment is almost guaranteed. And yet she dreams of a meeting that will sharpen her feelings, perhaps change her fate.
“Love at first sight is an instantaneous idealization of a person,” says Jungian analyst Tatyana Rebeko. “Almost at lightning speed, confidence appears: in front of us is the one who will make us happy.” But is everyone capable of it?
When feelings are overwhelmed
“It comes unexpectedly, capturing the whole being of a person, he simply does not realize what happened to him,” says psychotherapist Gleb Lozinsky. “His mind is focused on other thoughts. He is aware that someone is in control of this relationship. They are like an element.”
Those who have known this feeling remember that it came instantly and completely unexpectedly. “I wandered around the exhibition, looked at the paintings,” says 42-year-old Olga. “Suddenly I felt that someone was looking at me. A grey-haired man smiled at me. For some reason I thought: “A happy and smart person. You can live with it for the rest of your life.” The stranger approached Olga, they started talking… “Later Sasha also said that at that moment he felt an incredible surge of energy, lightness, springiness.”
“This state is akin to insight in psychotherapy,” says Tatiana Rebeko, “when we can’t find an answer to an important question for a long time, but at some point an insight occurs. And everything falls into place, lightness and understanding appear.
Each of us can fall in love at first sight. But only under certain conditions
“Love at first sight is always accompanied by a sense of uniqueness,” adds Gleb Lozinsky. – We suddenly realize that this person is the only one and we will live with him all our lives. Therefore, there cannot be many such moments. If the series of loves is endless, the sublime part of love at first sight and the uniqueness of meeting oneself disappear. Then we are talking more about a certain form of neurosis, which manifests itself in the obsessive behavior of a person “in love with love.”
32-year-old Marina is sure that she is not capable of such frivolity. “I need to know a person before I can love him. I can’t just – click – and fall in love. It didn’t happen to me, and I wouldn’t want to experience it.” She is convinced that she can never fall in love at first sight, because she does not need such love …
But Marina is wrong. “This feeling does not depend on our desire, because it comes to us unconsciously,” our experts say. Each of us can fall in love at first sight. But only under certain conditions.
Is it always mutual?
No. That is the tragedy of the situation. “Love at first sight comes when we meet a person who, as it seems to us, tells us about ourselves,” explains psychoanalyst Roland Gory. “He is giving us this signal against his own will. And reciprocity is, of course, not guaranteed.”
When the other does not share our experiences, we can withdraw and love while suffering. The only way out is to understand that only we see this mirage. And try to redirect your attention so as not to sink into the oncoming pain.
When we meet ourselves
32-year-old Stepan, having met Natalya, was not looking for love. However, so does she. He had just arranged an apartment in St. Petersburg and was going to enjoy the bachelor life. She, after graduating from graduate school, went to study in Strasbourg for two years.
That evening, Natalya arranged a holiday on the occasion of the departure. Stepan was brought with him by a friend. “The attraction that I felt for Natasha was so strong that I was even afraid of him,” recalls Stepan. “I didn’t want to believe it, I lied to myself because this sudden feeling threatened my quiet life. I left the party, but by the next morning I began to miss her. And I called her.”
Natalya says the same thing: “I saw him and seemed to fall under hypnosis. I knew he was the piece of the puzzle that my happiness was missing. When he called, I decided to cancel the trip. And I never regretted it.”
“Saturated with energy, powerful love at first sight touches the deep layers of our unconscious,” explains Tatiana Rebeko. We fully accept the other person – and he also accepts us. And the realization that we are worthy of this feeling inspires.
If the romance develops progressively, calmly, this does not excite the friends of the beloved. And love at first sight infects even those who are nearby: everyone wants to experience the same strong passion. But are we ready to meet her?
When we are free
It is impossible to find love at first sight, setting yourself such a goal. “Because this madness always arises involuntarily,” says the psychoanalyst Roland Gori, “it suddenly seizes us at the sight of a person and replaces his image with a bewitching mirage.”
Love at first sight requires openness, inner freedom from all obligations. But we are not always in this state. “If we are already in love and happy in a relationship, nothing will happen,” says Tatyana Rebeko. – Indeed, in this case, we splash out energy in relations with a real partner, in conflicts and reconciliations with him. And we will not have an unconscious need to fall in love at first sight.
“When a person suppresses his anxieties, he can break through with a flood of feelings,” agrees Gleb Lozinsky. “So he not only releases the accumulated negative energy, but also meets with himself. You can also say this: we fall in love with another, which helps us to know ourselves, to feel contact with ourselves, with our unconscious.”
When something is missing
Sudden love helps us understand what we lack. “When we fall in love, we experience a feeling of fullness, as if a missing part of our personality has returned to us,” writes psychoanalyst Robert Johnson in his book “We” (Cogito Center, 2005). “Life becomes tense and full of joy, ecstasy.” When we feel “completed,” we feel we have achieved a goal. We are fascinated by an illusory sense of coincidence, as if the person on whom our gaze fell will complete us and heal the wounds.
“It happens that sudden love will flash like lightning when we have just gone through hard times,” reflects Tatyana Rebeko. “At such moments of crisis, feelings can flare up for a friend’s husband (friend’s wife), because there is a feeling that the well-being of our friends is created by their partners.”
Love at first sight seems to give us the opportunity to experience rebirth in reality
But still more often there is a meeting with a stranger who suddenly comes to our aid. So, Julia at the age of 41 experienced love at first sight for the first time. “This meeting took place at the worst moment of my life: I found out that my husband was cheating on me. I tried to forgive him, but I felt only self-loathing and shame.”
One day, management instructed Yulia to meet with a new client. “A tall, angular man was waiting for me, he had childish hands and a very sad look. My heart was pounding, I felt restless, trembling, longing. He didn’t notice anything.
A few days later I saw him on the subway. I was so amazed that I thought it was a hallucination. He stopped. I blushed, muttered something and hurried away, never knowing if my feeling was mutual … “
When we are ready to return to the past
“In love, we are looking for a sense of security that we experienced in early childhood, next to our mother,” says Tatyana Rebeko. Those of us who feel the need to relive those moments when we exchanged the very first emotionally charged glances with our mother are prone to love at first sight.
“This happens unconsciously and does not depend on our will,” continues the psychotherapist. “We suddenly regress, returning to an earlier period of development. Why? Because this stranger reproduces for us the space in which we felt the love of the mother and this feeling sunk into the very depths of our being. Of course, it amazes us, because it is beyond our consciousness.”
We relive the emotional saturation of the first moments of communication in life, we experience the very keen curiosity that drives us from the moment we are born. Love at first sight seems to give us the opportunity to experience rebirth in reality.
Why is this feeling scary
Not always a sudden feeling develops into a long-term relationship. Often because the strategy of the behavior of lovers becomes … flight. “Love at first sight sweeps away the usual life, and this can be frightening,” explains Tatyana Rebeko. “We are losing control of what we have painstakingly created. So when we fall in love, we might decide not to go after that feeling.”
At the same time, love at first sight gives hope to experience what we aspire to, what we dream about, what we need so much. But such a prospect is sometimes so frightening that a person is unable to control himself. By refusing to fall in love, we protect ourselves both from anxiety and from the painful disappointment that is inevitable if the feeling turns out to be unrequited.
As a rule, this is done by those who are not confident in themselves. This is reminiscent of the first school love, which we hid with all our might. So we tried to keep the feeling that we didn’t know what to do with. We were afraid that if we confessed our love, we might be rejected, ridiculed and eventually abandoned.