what is love at 1st sight? Maiba lang ! ! !

There are many kinds of love, but what this article is concerned with is that form of love usually known as 'romantic love' or 'true love'. So what is romantic love and why do we need to define it?

Quite often we come across the scenario that a man or woman in a relationship is asking him or herself the question: "Is it love?" So, how can someone tell? Then there is another scenario, sometimes used in Hollywood movies as a plot device, wherein somebody doesn't actually believe in romantic love -- in its actual existence -- and so is willing to settle for something much less... until the right man or woman comes along, of course!

Then again, there is the phenomenon of so-called "love at first sight". Is this emotion that appears in a single moment something that a couple can base a lifelong commitment upon?

Here are my own views on the question of what is love, based on my life's experiences.

Firstly, "love at first sight". All the time we see other people who we find attractive. Some of them are more attractive than others. Some of them are very attractive indeed. If we see someone who falls into the latter group, and there are also other things about the person that makes him or her appear as a possible partner (for the human mind is very good at making judgments like this in a split-second, based on factors such as clothing style, what the other person is doing at the time, context and so on) then this combination of emotionally powerful components can be so strong as to qualify as "love at first sight".

There are many couples whose relationship has begun in this way, but mere physical attraction, however strong, is not enough in itself to provide a basis for a lifelong relationship. This brings us on to the real heart of the question "what is love?" -- what is it that enables us to have a long-term, even lifelong, relationship with another human being?

It certainly can begin with attraction of the "love at first sight" kind, or something approaching that in intensity, though with some love relationships physical attraction is not the catalyst to start them into life. But from whatever basis a relationship begins -- physical attraction or friendship or other circumstances -- if the relationship is to continue and the individuals concerned are not to "fall out of love", they must find each other's personalities delightful. If you "fall in love at first sight" with someone whose personal habits -- you subsequently discover -- start to irritate you, and whose views and opinions annoy you, then you will quickly find yourself falling out of love. So, you must like the other person very much as a person. And, the feeling must be mutual, of course.

Once you have attraction, followed by a mutual liking of personalities, this then leads to a deep friendship, a friendship that becomes deepened by sexuality. It becomes a friendship to beat all other friendships and relationships, and a closeness greater than any experienced before.

And that's really all there is to it, the deepest kind of friendship that began as physical attraction and moved on to a closeness greater than any other in the lives of the people concerned. It's romantic love. And it is something that, with careful nurturing, can last a lifetime.

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For other uses, see Love at first sight (disambiguation).

Love at first sight is an emotional condition whereby a person feels romantic attraction for a stranger on the first encounter with the stranger. The term may be used to refer to a mere sexual attraction or crush, but it usually refers to actually falling in love with someone literally the very first time one sees him or her, along with the deep desire to have an intimate relationship with that person. The stranger may or may not be aware that the other person has any such notion, and may not even be aware of the other person's presence (such as in a crowded place). Sometimes two people experience this phenomenon towards each other at the same time, usually when their eyes meet.

Greco-Roman conceptions

Main article: Eros (love)

In the classical world, the phenomenon of "love at first sight" was understood within the context of a more general conception of passionate love, a kind of madness or, as the Greeks put it, theia mania ("madness from the gods").^[1] This love passion was described through an elaborate metaphoric and mythological psychological schema involving "love's arrows" or "love darts", the source of which was often given as the mythological Eros or Cupid,^[2], sometimes by other mythological deities (such as Rumor^[3]). At times, the source of the arrows was said to be the image of the beautiful love object itself. If these arrows were to arrive at the lover's eyes, they would then travel to and 'pierce' and 'wound' his or her heart and overwhelm him/her with desire and longing (love sickness). The image of the "arrow's wound" was sometimes used to create oxymorons and rhetorical antithesis concerning its pleasure and pain.

"Love at first sight" was explained as a sudden and immediate beguiling of the lover through the action of these processes. "Love at first sight" occurs in numerous Greek and Roman works. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Narcissus becomes immediately spellbound and charmed by his own (unbeknownst to him) image. In Achilles Tatius's Leucippe and Clitophon, the lover Clitophon describes his own experience of the phenomenon thusly: "As soon as I had seen her, I was lost. For Beauty's wound is sharper than any weapon's, and it runs through the eyes down to the soul. It is through the eye that love's wound passes, and I now became a prey to a host of emotions..."^[4] "Love at first sight" was not, however, the only mode of entering into passionate love in classical texts; at times the passion could occur after the initial meeting or could precede the first glimpse.

Another classical interpretation of the phenomenon of "love at first sight" could be found in Plato's Symposium in Aristophanes' description of the separation of primitive double-creatures into modern men and women and their subsequent search for their missing half: "... when [a lover] ... is fortunate enough to meet his other half, they are both so intoxicated with affection, with friendship, and with love, that they cannot bear to let each other out of sight for a single instant." ^[5]

Medieval and Renaissance conceptions

The classical conception of love's arrows were elaborated upon by the Provençal troubadour poets of southern France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and became part of the European courtly love tradition. In particular, a glimpse of the woman's eyes was said to be the source of the love dart.^[6] In some medieval texts, the gaze of a beautiful woman is compared to the sight of a basilisk.

These images of the lover's eyes, the arrows and the ravages of "love at first sight" continued to be circulated and elaborated upon in the Renaissance and Baroque literature^[7] and pictorial imagery. Boccaccio for example, in his Il Filostrato mixes the tradition of love at first sight, the eye's darts and the metaphor of Cupid's arrow.^[8]: "Nor did he (Troilus) who was so wise shortly before... perceive that Love with his darts dwelt within the rays of those lovely eyes... nor notice the arrow that sped to his heart."^[9]

Love at first sight in fiction

Other works of fiction which use these tropes include:

• The first sight of the beautiful princess Angelica (character) in Ariosto's Orlando furioso and the witch Armida in Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered enchant the knights that perceive them; Giovanni Boccaccio's Elegy of Lady Fiammetta describes the ravages of love at first sight on a woman.
• Love at first sight occurs in Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare .
• In the French novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, the characters Marius Pontmercy and Cosette fall in love after glancing into each others' eyes.