There’s lots of reasons to have lust at first sight – mostly overactive hormones – but there’s only one reason for love at first sight. That’s because your subconscious has connected that person to the picture you carry in your mind, the picture of the person you want to resolve your old issues with. Love at first sight is always a danger signal!
One of the ways to tell if it’s a danger signal is if you find yourself wanting to move the relationship along unusually quickly. Do you want to move in together after the first couple of dates? Are you thinking about marriage before you even know the other person? Or the worst danger sign of all – telling your friends “I feel like I’ve known him forever!”
If you feel that way, you probably have a really close match to that image in your subconscious and all those old issues from childhood will be coming out to play.
Fortunately, there are two kinds of matches – behavioral and physical. The behavioral is the one to watch out for, because it’s based on the old issues. In my life I found myself attracted to intelligent but emotionally distant and controlling women like Mom. I tried to make them warm and cuddly, and for some reason they didn’t appreciate it! Go figure.
When I was first dating my wife, I was ready to leave at one point because “the spark wasn’t there” and I hadn’t yet realized that that was a good thing! The “spark,” of course, is the sign of a match in behavior to the stored image. Fortunately I decided to stay and see what happened. Imagine my surprise one day, after she had cut her hair really short, when I saw her across the room just right and saw my mother’s face! Yep, with short hair she was a match.
My subconscious had known all along, but I had no conscious realization of the resemblance. This is good – you can have a physical match without the behavioral issues that cause the pain. The attraction is not nearly as strong as the behavioral match, but true love can grow and create something beautiful. Real love always takes time. Instant attraction should make you run, not walk, to the nearest exit!
Got any good stories about instant attraction? Put them in the comments.
