I don’t believe in love at first sight.

“When you meet the one
who changes the way your heart beats,
dance with them to that rhythm
for as long as the song lasts.”

I spoke about some of my views on love previously, and now I’ll be doing that again. As the header says, I don’t believe in love at first sight. I don’t think such thing exists. I believe in infatuation. You spot someone across a room and see them speak, smile, you notice the way their hands move, the way they stand, you notice their body language, and even before you’ve heard them speak, something in you tells you, you are going to enjoy listening to them talk. That for me is everything – which is why you will never find me on a dating app.

As the years pass this type of moments happen less and less, which is quite heartbreaking, it deprives you of something wonderful. Something so simple yet captivating.

After you see that person across the room, there are a few scenarios. One – you don’t do anything, you turn away and think nothing of it again, which you might regret or not a few hours later. Two – you still don’t do anything yet the other person looked at you too, admired you also, got fascinated by you, and they decide to speak to you. Three – you both walk towards each other and start talking to each other, and you either realise that they are not as exciting as they seemed, or the other way around, they realise you are not what they were expecting, or you are both interested in each other and talk the night away without realising, because it is just so easy for you to speak with each other. Four – neither one of you does anything, and you never see each other again, you might regret it, they might regret it, neither one of you thinks of it again, so many options.

There are of course many more scenarios, but what matters here and what should be taken from this, is that even if you don’t act upon it, the other person might or neither one will do anything, our expectations weren’t met. Just because you are not acting upon something, it doesn’t mean you have control of what will happen next.

After the infatuation phase, which I believe should never fade away, and assuming you decide to meet up, go on a date, or simply do something together – simple things may have more meaning, things are going well and you both realise that you cherish each others company, you realise that you have things in common, you enjoy learning more and more about them and about the way their mind works, you decide for sure that that is something you want in your life, that is something you want to work on, you realise you want to build something with another person – that, that’s love.

Love doesn’t have a timeline; it works differently for everyone, it has its own meaning, many have tried to explain it. In my opinion, we can’t really explain it – because of how much and what it means it means. Every single person views colours a different way, two people don’t see a shade of colour the same way, we can tell if a shade is lighter or darker but we can’t explain that shade to a person. Colour is just a pigment of our imagination, and love is a beat of a heart.

There are countless metaphors for love, there is a Portuguese poem written by Luís Vaz de Camões that goes “O amor é fogo que arde sem se ver” which translated to English, by Fidelino de Figueiredo, in 1925, is “Love is a fire that burns yet burns unseen” – which again is a great way to try to explain love, but it’s meaning will mean something different to different people. (If anyone is interested in reading the poem it is available online)

I don’t believe in love at first sight, do you?