Why Resist Love At First Sight?
Love at first sight seems so right for guys. When I feel it, I so want to immediately get down and boogie with my new fancy. But many women resist love-at-first-sight; even going as far as to deny its existence altogether. I personally however, am a love-at-first-sight proponent. I’ve seen it appear in my love live numerous times through the years. So for me, love-at-first-sight definitely exists.
However, while there’s little doubt that love-at-first-sight exists universally, women have good reason to resist this quickly-appearing impulse, because acting with abandon can get them killed if they immediately trust a bad fellow. So, before women should respond to such feelings, they ought to thoroughly vet that new man in their lives, and make sure they can trust him.
Keep in mind that trust is not the same as love, so that while feelings of passionate love can occur at first sight, well-founded trust cannot. It’s important not to confuse love-at-first-sight with trust, and understand that thought trust at first sight does not (or at least, should not) occur, love-at-first-sight happens all the time. So for women, love-at-first-sight should be resisted, at least at first.
The lady needs to feel that she can trust the man, not only to do no harm to her, but to stay around to protect and support both her and her children. Again, this type of trustworthiness is difficult to assess quickly. Certainly, it cannot be gleaned within the first few minutes of meeting a potential lover, and so this may be another reason so many women resist love-at-first-sight. For them, the thought of loving someone who hasn’t clearly demonstrated unswerving desire and moral makeup to stand by them and their children, is fallacious. They can’t feel love (or at lest, they should not act on the love they feel) until the safety and welfare of themselves and their children has been assured.
However, once again, men need give much less thought to this sort of trust. Men need not resist love-at-first-sight as cautiously as women. Fathers are not for example, generally as intimately connected with the child’s proper development as is the mother. A quick scan through the news in fact, shows that the problem of the so-called deadbeat dads far surpasses that of mothers who aren’t doing their fair share at caring for the children. We hear much less these days about “dead beat moms.” It’s much more likely therefore, that a man will abandon his family than will a woman. So once again, the woman has far more to worry about from men then men do from women; especially if her goal is to raise a healthy nuclear family. It’s no wonder women insist so much more on knowing a man’s “inner essence” than men are of knowing women’s. Men have less to lose by not knowing their mates well, than do women. Men can afford therefore, to more indulge their love-at-first-sight feelings than can women, who must resist them at first to ensure their safety.
In light of all this, I fear that I’ve wrongly expected women to love me quickly. According to David Buss in his book The Evolution of Desire, men and women have necessarily very different, and yes, even conflicting sexual strategies. What’s right for one is often very wrong for the other. Women understandably, must take their time. But for men, taking time to select well doesn’t offer the same reproductive advantage. In fact, a man may hinder his chances of reproducing if he spends too much time waiting around for the female or trying to get her to love him before sleeping with her.
Perhaps in my 20s, I’ve been insensitive to the female perspective here. Rightly so because with [First Love], whom I gave seven years, all I got for my patience was a mere four months of happy togetherness. For the rest of the period, I carried anxiety and was notably unhappy as she repeatedly turned me away, withholding her love. In this case, if I had moved on after the first couple years, I might have been happier with other women and less wounded psychologically. Waiting for [First Love] to “come around” thus, did not pay off for me. She resisted my love-at-first-sight for way too long.
So it’s reasonable that I came to believe that the lack of immediate reciprocation probably means that the woman will never love me. I don’t like waiting too long because in my experience, the longer a guy has to wait for a lady, the more likely his desires for her will go forever unfulfilled. As such, having to wait for more than a few months for her to open her arms, is a sure sine to get away, and invest in someone else. While some resistance of love-at-first-sight is wise, too much of it becomes off-putting.
So, while having to wait very long indicates that she’ll probably never love a particular man, some amount of waiting is still necessary. While quite young and ignorant of the theories in evolutionary psychology, I may have given up on perhaps hundreds of eligible women, because they showed little or no immediate interest in me. But I hope that with these insights today, I can better weather a new lover’s initial coyness, and avoid viewing it as a sign of prejudice or as a prediction of certain doom. We’ll see.