Love at First Sight

What Does Love At First Sight Feel Like?

OK, I’ll admit it — I’m a skeptic when it comes to idea of “love at first sight.” To be fair, I’m a logician, not a romantic, so I tend to approach everything with a healthy dose of skepticism. But it does happen, and not just in Disney movies. Two strangers can actually lock eyes and know that they are meant to be and no, it’s not just biased memory talking when people claim this has happened to them. So what does love at first sight feel like? I spoke to relationship expert and founder of LoveQuest Coaching Lisa Concepcion, and she explained the universal laws that make this phenomenon possible.

Truth be told, I didn’t experience love at first sight with my husband (sorry, buddy). As well matched as we are, my first thought upon seeing him outside the bar we arranged to meet was, “His Tinder photos didn’t lie. His eyes really are that big.” I thought he was too inattentive. He found me “too nice.” But Prince Harry experienced love at first sight when he met Meghan Markle, and just look how in love those two are. If you’ve never experienced it for yourself, here’s what really goes on when those sparks fly.

One of the most popular universal laws is the law of attraction. This is the belief that your thoughts are made from pure energy and that the power of positive thinking can actually draw positive experiences into your life. Basically, if you want to find love, believing that you will actually helps — and, of course, the inverse is also true. Concepcion’s own coaching practice draws upon universal laws, so when it comes to love at first sight, she is a firm believer.

“[The law of attraction] is the law responsible for the love-at-first-sight feeling and experience, [which is] one of the best co-creations between us and the universe,” she explains. By projecting love out into the universe, the law of attraction says that love will be given back to you. If you read Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret back in 2006 when everyone and their mom was obsessed with the power of positive thinking, then you’re probably already familiar with this concept.

But, according to Concepcion, the universe doesn’t just reciprocate your positive thoughts with a general feeling of love — you may actually be rewarded with a person who inspires you to love even deeper. “We are all love at the core of our being, so when we see someone who inspires us to tap into the deepest, most authentic inner love, we reflect it outward onto them,” she says. “It’s a meeting of two like energies.” So feeling love inspires love — that makes sense to me!

But how do you know for sure that what you’re experiencing is love at first sight? The way that Concepcion describes it, love at first sight is all-consuming, and when it’s happening, you’ll know it. “When it happens, there is a feeling, a deep knowing, that there is a significant energetic match to the person,” she says. So I guess that’s where the conception of a “magnetic attraction” comes from.

And it makes sense that Concepcion is a believer in love at first sight, as she actually experienced it herself with her partner. “We both felt a physical vibration when we shook hands and looked at each other,” she recalls. “Time stood still and things went into slow motion for about five seconds. We heard our hearts beating. It was nuts and we both felt it. It was a feeling of, ‘I absolutely know I must know this person.'” Now that’s some seriously powerful stuff.

You may roll your eyes at the people who say, “We just met and we knew,” but love at first sight seems pretty impossible to imagine unless you’ve experienced it for yourself. As Concepcion says, “Love at first sight is a way of coming home to yourself through the meeting of another person.” Even if you’re not a believer, you have to admit that the idea of coming home to yourself through a random encounter is pretty darn romantic. Or, I guess, the point of love at first sight is that it’s not a random encounter at all — it’s been premeditated by the universe.

That explosion you just heard? That was the sound of my mind being blown.