Have you ever been in love in the romantic sense?

Gruffalox wrote: »

The love at first sight as pure projection is a tad cynical. I remember clearly what I felt the first time I saw my husband. He was on a bus. At a distance from me. He had a lopsided smile, he did not see me. He had golden hair on his arms and legs. He was so relaxed in his body, like a free animal. Just totally at peace and content He was wearing cut up denim shorts, sandals, a short sleeved shirt open down the front- it was a warm place abroad. He worn a red bandana knotted around his neck and his hair was curly and shoulder length. I felt a completely overwhelming almost psychedelic sensation, it was not sexual, it was an innocent sense of being mesmerised, like a psychic recognition or deja vu, or some kind of compression of time where the whole of past and future contracted. It was literally as though he was illuminated by one of those angelic shafts of light in esoteric paintings.
I got off the bus and presumed I would never see him again and that did not matter. I did not even think anymore about it, just flowed on with what I was doing in my life at that time. It was a whole experience worthy of being beginning middle and end and I just felt a sort of happiness and confidence that all was well with the world.

I did see him again, as it happened.

gogo wrote: »

There was no big explosion, no grand gestures, it just is. It just happened.

Wibbs wrote: »

Possibly, though if so more because they can't suspend disbelief enough to fall into it so don't. Those who can, which would be most people, certainly when young, do. Some folks are just wired differently, or experience has rewired them.

And S makes some valid points which are more objectively true than they're not, though because most of us suspend our disbelief for good mental, emotional and even evolutionary reasons we choose to ignore them.

Better looking people do have it easier. A good looking man or woman will simply have more choices unless they're curtailed by say social anxiety. Study after study has shown people overwhelmingly tend to end up with partners of the same attractiveness* and social and educational and intelligence levels. While there are exceptions they prove the rule. And yet you often hear and I found more from men that their partner is "out of their league". If generally speaking you want to know how attractive you are look to your previous relationships and how attractive they would be to others. That's your "level" pretty much.

Its even been found that we find those with different immune systems to our own to be more attractive. The mechanism for this is not understood, but scent seems to be a big part of it. Years ago I met this woman who was a "perfect fit" for me in pretty much every way and she expressed similar in my direction and yet when we kissed something was most certainly "off" and we both felt it. Very weird. Maybe our reptile brains went "sorry, nope". Hell it's even been found that women at different times in their menstrual cycle are attracted to different male faces. Around ovulation they click faces that are more masculine, when not or when pregnant they prefer less masculine faces. The pill can skew this and there has been some research that showed breakups were more likely to happen after a woman gave up taking hormonal contraception(or started it). Another study into strippers of all people found that the women on the pill got fewer tips from the men. Indeed among some of the women they had already noticed this. Somehow the men were picking up "not fertile". It's complex and subtle this stuff and covered with a thick layer of cultural and psychological stuff too.



*This can be skewed by richer men who tend to partner "up", but again it's part of the attractiveness quotient.

Sheridan81 wrote: »

It seems to me if love was really as magical as generally considered, there would be a lot less single people,women in particular, who look like the back side of a bus.