What Do Men Think REALLY Think About Love At First Sight?

By Matthew Stefanson
[Message From Mars]
Is love at first sight possible?  Matthew Stefanson outlines what men think about the concept.
Life is not like the movies, at least not the good parts.  The hero doesn't always win the big game, the damsel isn't usually even in distress.  Very few things in life could be scripted and we accept this for most things as a rule, but we're still hopelessly romantic about romance.

For some reason, all of our logic and right-mindedness just flies out the window when we start to consider love and we all fervently hope, even if it's just to ourselves, that we'll have that slow-motion, music-accompanied, love at first sight encounter that we've seen so many times on the silver screen.

But can it happen?  I'm not here to answer that, at least not definitively.  What I am here to do is examine the idea from the point of view of someone of the male persuasion.  This week in Message From Mars and in our sister column, View From Venus, we'll be discussing love at first sight.  Sarah will be talking about what women think of the phenomena and I will be explaining how your average male views it.

The Real Of It

Does it exist?  Is love at first sight something that we can actually believe in as rational people?  Can we, in good conscience, delude ourselves into believing that around the next bend there could be someone with whom we share a connection that is glorious and instantaneously apparent to both of us?

Realistically, no.  The processes of human interaction and the mechanisms of love as an emotion are too delicate to throw a monkey wrench in there and expect it to come out as love.  That’s not how it works, at least not entirely.

Hopefully, even men aren’t naïve and stupid enough to believe that something like this works instantly.

Work It

So if it’s not real, does that mean that all of our grandparents who insisted that they fell in love with each other immediately were lying?  Probably.  It’s the elder generation’s job to lie to the younger ones (See: Santa Clause).  But it’s not all untrue.  Two people can fall for each other instantly, but that’s not the immediate start of a great and everlasting relationship.  You still have to make every effort to sustain the arrangement and you have to get through the onerous task of actually getting to know each other.

Most men don’t seriously believe that you can just jump into something like this and have it work itself out.  Pre-destiny is a tough sell for anything, but especially for love.  Though it would be nice to skip the awkward first dates and get straight to the bliss, that isn’t going to happen.
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