Movies often seem to portray these magical moments where two people meet for the first time and instantly fall in love. The nickname these movies usually are given by the masses are “chick flicks” and people go in droves to see them for one reason. They want to believe that love at first sight exists but ironically, in more cases than not, what really exists is “lust at first sight”.
Let me establish right off the bat that I actually do enjoy “chick flicks” and those magical moments of love they always seem to paint. But I’ve also found from my own life’s experiences that movies like this aren’t based much in reality. In the real world, two people that meet for the first time and find each other seriously attractive will most often initially experience lust versus love.
Lust is when those two people become focused on each other’s looks and body more than engaging in any conversations that have real depth. It’s when they are thinking sexual thoughts without really knowing much about each other. It’s when they avoid sharing real feelings between each other. And it’s when either one of those people leave as soon as any sex is complete instead of cuddling and spending more time afterwards with each other.
Love on the other hand is when those two people want to spend quality time together doing things other than sex. It’s when they want to get lost in conversations and forget about the hours that pass. It’s when they want to honestly listen to each other’s feelings and make each other happy. It’s when they motivate each other to be better in some way. And when the sex finally transpires, its when their souls become connected on much a deeper level to where the two of them become intertwined as one.
I spent years and years meeting person after person where I had “feelings” for them and translated that into some form of early love. This frequently led me to going and telling everyone I knew how great this person was and that I thought they could be “the one”. By that point, I had already put on those rose-colored glasses where that person could do no wrong. What I never realized was that I was constantly creating a fantasy in my head like all those “chick flicks” did for me. I never stopped to ponder the fact that I didn’t know much of anything about those people I was having those “feelings” for. And how could I over the course of just a moment, a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months of time? While I kept each of these fantasies alive, the word “love” made it’s way into those connections and began to be mutually said between myself and the other person. But as time moved forward when I really got to know any of them and when the sex was already an act that had taken place between us, the illusion my fantasy created always dissipated. Most of the time when that happened, I was left with a feeling of disgust inside over what I had done, or I had the thought that it was time to move on to someone else where this process would start all over again.
Love is something that is cultivated over time and it’s not motivated by one’s selfish needs and wants. Until I figured that out, I just went from person to person experiencing lust and not love over and over again. I see all of this now in my relationship with my partner Chris. The two of us built a friendship before we ever even had a single intimate moment. That’s not to say that either of us didn’t have the thoughts before that happened, but we spent many months growing closer together and getting lost in each other’s sentences before even a single kiss took place.
My relationship with Chris does have some of that Hollywood magic built into it but it never was about hearing heavenly music and having slow motion scenes take place when we first met. Our love for each other has taken a lot of time to build and grow with God being at the center of it. I can’t say that was true with most of the others I ever chased after, even though I thought I was experiencing love with each of them.
So the next time you meet someone for the first time and feel that electric spark, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and realize you probably don’t know much about this person, except for the fact that you are most likely finding them rather hot. Having that heated attraction is only going to cloud your ability to think rationally. So as you become giddy and get the giggles while engaging in playful conversations with that person, understand that this is quite likely not “love at first sight”. The more likelihood is this, that you are only experiencing “lust at first sight”. Instead of going down that path and having meaningless sex and guilt laden feelings afterwards, try getting to know the person for awhile. Maybe then you’ll be able to develop a real love that’s shared mutually between you and that person, or you’ll just end up seeing that it really was nothing more than lust right from the start.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
