Love at First Sight? - The PASH Wedding Forums and Message Boards

tobmarried · #1 01-05-2006, 03:34 AM

Does anyone else have a love at first sight story? My finacee proposed to me the day that we met. He looked me straight in the eye and said "You are going to be my wife!" It was like a fairy tale. Anyone else have a similar experience?

deputysgurl · #2 01-05-2006, 03:53 AM

i haven't had one of those experiences, but I just wanted to say Congrats and welcome to Bliss. Just jump right in. Ask question if you need background info on any of us.

cru5h · #3 01-05-2006, 04:06 AM

I'm skeptical of those stories, but I hope yours is the real thing for sure. Congratulations and welcome to the forums

I look forward to hearing more of your story since I definitely don't know anyone with an experience like that.

ljeagle · #4 01-05-2006, 05:10 AM

My Fh told me a lot of stuff the first night. He told me I was going to fall in love with him and be with him the rest of my life. I just thought he was trying to get in my pants. lol welcome to bliss...

bebe · #5 01-05-2006, 05:14 AM

Welcome to Bliss! I don't know about love at first sight, but my DH has been calling me his 'future wife' since the day we met. It took us 7-1/2 years to finally tie the knot...

Complicated Woman · #6 01-05-2006, 02:58 PM

Not exactly how our story goes. More like "love looked us in the face for several years but we dragged our heels in exploring it." My aunt and uncle met and were married within a few months, my uncle swears he laid eyes on her and knew she was his kind of girl and he was going to marry her -- they're the closest to a "love at first sight" story I've known, til now, I suppose. Congrats on yours and welcome to Bliss!

maroki13 · #7 01-05-2006, 03:05 PM

Welcome to Bliss! So, were you actually engaged from the first day you met? Or he simply was stating that one day you would be married? I don't have a love at first sight story. Ours is more like a "look twice and you'll find love" story.

Marrying_the_Good_Husband · #8 01-05-2006, 03:10 PM

Dave and I were just watching a program last night about the inner child. And how people have "radar" for finding that one person across the room with all the best and worst qualities of their other-sex parent. The courting is amazing because the "inner children" connect on all these things, then you get married and you think "You're supposed to be my dad!"/"You're supposed to be my mom!" and dysfunction ensues... DEFINITELY my experience in past relationships. I absolutely 100% believe that people feel that INSTANT connection based on those inner child issues. Can it lead to marriage? Absolutely! But I don't think it will be a functional one. Sorry to be such a "downer."

This is the link to the video we were watching:
http://www.bradshawcassettes.com/

wembley · #9 01-05-2006, 03:13 PM

We were not love at first sight. I had a crush on him when we met in Junior High gym class but it took until our second year in college to actually date and fall in love. I like how it turned out though, now I have a future husband that I love and a best friend, since that's how we started.

Marge129 · #10 01-05-2006, 03:30 PM

Jerry and I met when we were drunk... somehow I doubt it was love at first sight.

I did take him home with me that night, though

... and we've been together ever since. I think it took me spending some sober time with him to realize he was something special.

Kim&Bob2004 · #11 01-06-2006, 12:25 AM

I didn't love Bob at first sight, though I was attracted to him the first time I seen him. I think I really discovered I loved him in early June 2004 and late June 2004 he proposed and I said YES. I was a virgin when I married so I had many years of making very sure of my feelings before jumping in, with Bob I would have gladly jumped into the deep end!

Never felt that for any man before, and my door step wasn't entirely empty. From the time I met my DH to the time we said I do, we had been seeing each other for about 7 months or so. Fast? Yes, but we are both older and had been acquaintances for 2 years before dating.

I took a marriage and family college course last term and in that course I had to interview five couples. I interviewed a variety of couples, in various stages of their relationships. Some newlyweds, a couple divorced couples, an elderly couple and a lesbian couple. Guess what, the couples that met and married quickly had no more issues then those that had been dating and living together for years. In fact the elderly couple married after two weeks of dating. They have been married for more than 50 years and have stayed in my home and I can honestly say they have a wonderful relationship. Maybe their inner children did seek out each other, but this couple proves it can work. The couple with the most issues was a couple I interviewed that married after dating for two years and living together for one and each were previously divorced at least once. The husband's first wife died and his second marriage ended in a divorce and the wife was twice divorced. Their marriage is rocky, IMHO. But if they are committed to working through their issues I suspect they can have the kind of marriage they want. The other couples had known each other a variety of time, anywhere from 6 weeks to 3 years. Also my parents married after 6 months of knowing each other and were married until my father died in 2001. They were together almost 33 years.

I wont rain on your parade, I don't know you or your relationship, but having an honest commitment to making a relationship work and flourish in a functional and loving way is the key to a happy marriage. I am not saying that the roses in your garden won't have thorns, the issue is to not give up with the first hint of a weed. It's not just men with weeds, we women have them too.

Kim&Bob2004 · #12 01-06-2006, 03:19 AM

I also wanted to add that the amount we love our spouse, at least it's this way with me, on the day one married them is totally different from how much they love him/her say even a year later, imagine 10, 20 etc years later..... I loved Bob so much when we first married, but by the first anniversary I realized I loved him even more. We had weathered our first fight, coping with in-laws and doing home improvement projects. I came to understand that love grows with commitment and respect. I am sure 10 years from now I will look back and the love I have for him then will be bigger then the huge amount I have for him now..... Does this make any sense?????????

doodlebug1981 · #13 01-06-2006, 03:49 AM

Makes total sense. I can see how my love for Wes has grown just by going through the trials of building a house and planning a wedding. We are learning how to handle the tough stuff together.

Marrying_the_Good_Husband · #14 01-06-2006, 01:32 PM

Yeah, absolutely, Kim. "Love at first site" is nothing but lust. It's the experiences you share together and the emotional intimacy that builds in time that really makes love grow. Working through issues together and gaining a deeper understanding of each other in the process definitely makes the love grow.

Complicated Woman · #15 01-06-2006, 03:38 PM

MTGH, that inner child attraction is interesting. I'd never heard anything about that phenomenon before.

Kim, I think you're dead on in all you said. When Tom and I first started thinking of getting married, we asked some of the strong couples in our lives -- friends and family who had been happily married for 10 years or more -- what makes it work. Some had known each other their whole lives, some had only dated for a little while -- like I said, my aunt and uncle married within a few months of meeting, and they are going strong 21 years later. They've been through some external difficulties that many marriages do not face, and they've come out of it together.

One friend told us, "Marriages often fail because people expect love to sustain them without working to sustain their love. Marriages thrive when people realize that fairy tales are fairy tales and that healthy relationships take hard work and devotion. Through that hard work and devotion, love grows and flourishes, you learn that you really do have a partner through better and worse, and you can't help but love them more and more."

Another said, "A lot of people question whether or not they married the right person. For me, the answer is simple. Am I married to him? Then he's the right person. He is it for me -- sometimes it's hard and sometimes it's easy, we learn and we grow. It's almost like we're dancing, and every so often the music changes, or one of us decides to change the step, but we keep the dance going, figuring out what the other is doing and working to move together."

So I guess I think that "love at first sight" could work out if one didn't expect it to be a magical thing that carried them through their relationship. Expectations have to be realistic and one has to be willing to give 100% to their partner, working to treat them with respect and caring for their love so that it grows with their relationship and shared experiences.

Heather · #16 01-06-2006, 04:48 PM

I've avoided this topic because like Crush, I'm not too keen on the concept itself. MTGH - I have heard something similar to that before, (the whole inner child concept) when I was in my early 20's. I think I laughed, but as I get older, I think has a lot of merit. Of course, in my 20's, I had an inner child, and outer child, and upper child and a lower child.

Anyway, the first time I saw Mike, I thought he was hot as hell and I was very attracted to him. There's more to it, maybe I'll finally write in the Bridal Journal Section of how we met & became engaged. He tells me that when he first saw/met me, there was something "weird" about me. He now says that it took a while to figure it out, but that he knew he was looking at his future wife. I don't think he would consider it love at first site.

cru5h · #17 01-06-2006, 05:39 PM

Yeah, when I say skeptical I think it's more "chance" than an actual phenomenon. Like there's just as much of a percentage of people who can say they believe as there are those who feel love grows on them.

I've had that strange feeling before, like a person could be more important than their existence in passing. This guy, who was hot as hell, was trying to "holla" at me in the car. I remembered wondering why someone so attractive would be hitting on me. I just smiled, waved, went on my merry way. Then I saw him again (he has a bigass red pickup truck) and this town isn't very small. It's hard to run into the same stranger twice. We were behind him at the gas pump and he just kept looking at me, staring and smiling all cheesy. Richy was with me so he stopped looking at me when he was coming back to the pump. I was very attracted to this guy and I felt some strange connection, but was I going to give up the strong years I'd put into a healthy relationship for a bunch of feelings? Nope. Just like that Erykah Badu song: I Guess I'll See Ya Next Lifetime.

I'm a strong believer in things working out just the way they're supposed to (even when it's not what everyone wants), so if that means somene's future fiance was able to pick them out of all the people in the world on one particular night in one particular place - I'm not going to say it doesn't happen. It's just not something I would go for myself.

Heather · #18 01-06-2006, 06:11 PM

Oh my god Crush - I've had the same experience. Albany isn't a huge city, but it's odd to run into the same person you don't know more than a time or two. This person and I had always run into each other but never spoke. He would just kind of stare at me. If he wasn't so gorgeous, I would have thought he was creepy - but I guess it still was a little weird.

I finally "met" him after like the sixth "encounter" in five years. He was bartending at a place I rarely went to, and the first words out of his mouth when I walked in were to the other bartender. He said, "Sheila, this is my soul mate." Then he looked at me and said: "What's your name?" I said Heather, and he said: "Sheila, I would like you to meet my soul mate Heather."

It was very surreal. My friends and I hung out there for about an hour and he of course didn't charge us a dime. I then met Mike, and the rest is history. I haven't seen him since, but I don't know why we didn't exchange numbers at the time. I was single, but maybe he wasn't. I don't know.

Ya'll know I'm crazy about my husband, have no regrets and would never change a thing, but I have to admit like Vic, that there was something strange about the encounters with this guy...

Marrying_the_Good_Husband · #19 01-06-2006, 06:50 PM

The inner child/connection thing makes me think about when I met Dave...but not in relation to Dave, but to the OTHER guy who asked me out then! I met Dave and this George Clooney look-alike at a picnic (literally works as one). "George" asked me out within 5 minutes of meeting him, and I was INSTANTLY attracted because he had all the player qualities my inner child has always been attracted to. But just a few weeks before I had begun to realize that I was always instantly attracted to guys that I needed to pursue and "help." Anyway, I was talking to BOTH Dave and "George" all day, and by the end of the day, it dawned on me that "George" was the kind of guy I was ALWAYS attracted to, and Dave was someone I really enjoyed talking to, even though there was no "spark." I could see where the "excitement" with "George" would just eventually blow up in my face, so I wasn't going to let myself go down THAT road again. And with Dave, I just enjoyed talking to him SO much and we connected on all these levels, but it really took a couple of months for me to view him beyond friendship just BECAUSE he wasn't that inner child type I was always attracted to.

It turned out Dave had the SAME realizations. That he was trying to avoid the same types of girls he was always attracted to and not letting himself pursue anything with girls that he KNEW would be bad news. And he asked me out because he saw that I was really different and that there was definitely something there worth exploring. But I think it took a while before he was really "attracted" to me, just because I was missing those inner child qualities he was always attracted to, too.

Ok, and my "running into" guy story... One night I was out with friends and I met this guy on Trivia night. But he was with a girl, but they didn't seem to be on a date because he was paying more attention to me. Anyway, I thought he was intelligent and attractive, he thought the same as me apparently. Four months later, I go back to that bar--I see someone light up from across the room, but I didn't recognize him, but I'm like, WOW! It was him. He came up to me and said how he's been going to that place for four months trying to find me again. And we instantly made plans to go out. (It turned out the girl was an ex who was moving away, so he was having one last drink with her then, but didn't feel "right" about asking for my number.) We went out, it was like whirlwind romance for a couple months, and then it hit me--he's EXACTLY like my father. This was the start of me dating after my divorce and being able to find that man in a crowded bar who had the EXACT issues my inner child sought, just like the video I mentioned talked about. They ALL were. Except for Dave. But, as I said, I had to make a CONSCIOUS effort to tell myself to give him a chance BECAUSE he was different. If I went on my "gut instincts" of my issues inside, I never would have.

SuzyBride · #20 01-08-2006, 03:24 AM

My great aunt Patsy went on a blind date when she was 19. It was love at first sight! She and my great uncle Fred were inspereable for 2 months. They got married after knowing each other only 2 months!!!! He went to war (WWII), came home, they had 6 kids and 11 grandkids. Very happily married until he passed away a few years back. I believe that love at first sight exists, but only for those who believe it exists.. if that makes any sense.