Love At First Sight, or Lust At First Sight?

By: Gabriella Celona

Love at first sight. I want to believe that love at first sight is realistic; but is it love at first sight? Or is it lust at first sight?

One thing you should know about me is that I love love. I love everything about love, personal connections, and happiness. So you would think I out of all people would be the number one person to believe in love at first sight, right? Wrong.

I don't know, maybe I just haven't experienced love at first sight yet, and maybe I never will but that’s okay. I don't think love is any stronger if it develops over time or if it is “love at first sight”. To me, it’s what you build within a relationship that matters.

Full disclosure, I am such a hopeless romantic. I want the love that the people in movies have. A man hasn’t dared to say this to me yet, but if they did say anything along the lines of how love is not like in the movies, I would say they are wrong. To be honest, all I want is my own version of that type of love, you know? The one that makes you feel wanted, special, and seen. The type that makes you feel whole, so much so that you in turn want to make your significant other feel that way too. This is so, so important in a relationship. We all need to know our love language when considering building serious relationships. We should also do a bit of a deep dive into our partner's love language as well. With that being said, back to the moral of this story, is this Love; or Lust?

When you first make eye contact, you're either attracted to a person, or you're not. Most of the time, whether we like it or not, attraction plays a big factor in romantic relationships. Some people may believe this is a bad thing, but personally, I think it could be a positive thing. Attraction comes in so many different forms, attraction is not just the physical. Let me explain, someone could be so physically attractive, and then you get to know their personality, and their personality may not be attractive to you. My belief on attraction is this, it can be influenced and become stronger by who you fall in love with, and physical attraction does play a factor in who you may see yourself with. You eventually learn to love the things that aren't “perfect” about that person you were so automatically attracted to the first time you saw them.

I think that attraction is honestly what makes a romantic relationship differ from a great friendship. I have a lot of very good-looking friends, and I love their personalities, but it doesn’t mean that I am attracted to them. You should want to be attracted to your partner. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be with someone who didn't find me attractive. People tend to forget that attractiveness is not the same thing as the beauty standards that society fabricates. Beauty standards are a social construct that doesn’t always have to coincide with what you are attracted to.

Although I don’t think love at first sight has been something I have experienced, if it is even possible; lust at first sight is definitely something I believe in and have experienced. Lust is a powerful sexual desire you have towards a person. This lust, personally, makes me want something more with a person than just the physical. It makes me want to get to know a person, and see if a relationship could possibly form out of this thing called lust.

Then again, I do believe that lust can turn into love. But this is where things get complicated because it brings me to the topic of hookup culture. Hook-up culture can be such a hard topic to discuss because of all the questions that come up. If you're hooking up with one person consistently and it goes on for what feels like forever, feelings could develop. Once feelings get involved, things could easily get serious between the two of you. But what if the timing just isn't right for one of you? What do you do if it's not so easy to just start dating?

This is where it gets complex because if it really is love at first sight; shouldn’t starting a relationship with that person be just as simple as falling in love with them in the first place?