Queer Love 411: Love Beyond First Sight

Many summers ago, I met a girl who was cute and personable — and yet I wasn’t sure I was fully into it. Even after two or three dates, I felt myself maintaining some distance. Unconsciously, I’d placed the two of us into separate boxes. She wouldn’t understand me. We’d never have a deeper connection, my brain decided. Sensing my ambivalence, the woman addressed it with me. I wasn’t sure how to respond—but I did make an effort to be more present from then on. To really give the connection a shot, setting aside my judgments and preconceived notions.

…Unto positive results. Something inside me shifted. Both my heart and mind opened, and a connection grew thereafter. Despite my initial feeling that we’d never understand each other, I realized talking to her was easy, that we laughed a lot, and could connect over real things.
 I started feeling like I could be myself — and like she was showing me her real self too, underneath the facade and performative energy that had initially kept us separate. She turned out to have just as much depth as other women I’d dated, which she unearthed over time (the difference was she just didn’t lead with it or spill it all out on the first date).

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First impressions in dating are somewhat unavoidable. According to an article in The Latch: “Evidence shows that we start constructing our idea of who another person is on first contact. Just one picture on Tinder, one tweet we find hilarious or off-putting, and we think we know who the person is. As The Bachelor proves, no activity is more ruled by fantasies than dating.”

Our brains are constantly (if unconsciously) taking details from present situations and comparing them to ones from the past. Maybe the person we’re with now shared the same distinct eyebrow ridge as an unlikeable character in a movie we once saw. Maybe they had the same grating laugh of our long-estranged father. Our mind makes the instant comparison and warns: “Stay away.”

The problem with it?

It’s an impulsive and primal (as opposed to logical) signaling —and impulse isn’t always wise. Nor is it always coming from an enlightened place of inner knowing and higher intuition. Sometimes it’s brought about simply from (random) classical conditioning.

Furthermore, according to Jay Sherry: “Studies show that first impressions are easily influenced by factors we may not even register. In one study, a psychologist at Yale University had participants briefly hold either a cup of warm coffee or iced coffee. They gave a packet containing information about a person they didn’t know and were asked to assess that person. The people who held the warm coffee described the individuals they read about as being substantially warmer in personality than those who held the iced coffee.”

In Pavlov’s experiment, the food and bell sound had nothing in common—but the dogs learned to associate the two (arbitrary, unrelated) stimuli to find a meaningful link. Bell means I’ll be fed. Applied to dating: A grating laugh means I’ll be hurt/ignored/abandoned somewhere down the line like my dad with the (similarly grating) laugh did to me. My brain’s association with the woman in my opening example was “outgoing/conventional/bubbly personality/effusive” which means “I won’t be understood or seen on a deeper level.”

The consequence is that once we have our minds made up — both about the person and about what they could possibly have to say — their words pass through a filter in our heads, confirming what we already know or believe to be true. People act in ways that contradict our initial views of them, but we don’t see it when we’re not looking.

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Applying this to dating

“We met in person, and they didn’t live up to their profile.” I hear people say this a lot. What I remind myself of when I too start to think about it is that we’re seeing a person within a distilled and finite exchange. “Who that person is ” could just as much be that happy and comfortable individual you saw in the pictures when they’re with their friends or in their element.

I once met another woman for whom my feelings had been lukewarm for the first several dates. And yet as we spent more time together, I felt an attraction growing. I felt it as we cuddled with baby animals at a pumpkin patch. I felt it as we read books on top of haystacks, surrounded by bucolic scenery. I felt it as we split salted caramel ice cream in freshly baked waffle cones and bonded over our shared love of treehouses at a bar with a fireplace. Most of all I felt it as we looked out from the top of a hill onto a glittering night-time view of the Bay Area, all lit up and buzzing with life. She’d just lifted me into the air for a hug; my legs were wrapped around her back, arms slung over her shoulders while she smiled and laughed. As we kissed, the moment felt magical. I was sharing an enchanting moment with someone my younger self may have never thought to give a second glance.

Science of People founder Vanessa Van Edwards shares a similar story: “When I met my husband and heard that he was a computer programmer, I made a whole bunch of hasty assumptions about him: must be analytical, must be shy, must not be creative. Oof! Even writing this makes me squirm. What a judgmental person I was—and all because I hadn’t fully realized my own self yet. But I kept talking to him, and the more I got to know him, the more I realized how creative he was. I didn’t discover this on the first, second, or third date. I discovered it after nearly a month of dating. What kept me going until then? Besides the attraction and the always-interesting conversation (we seriously talked for hours every time we saw each other), it became pretty clear that we were compatible on the things that make up the core of each other as people.”

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It’s hard to set aside our initial first impressions entirely. But it is possible to shelve them for short periods of time. And while they’re shelved, people–our dates—just may surprise us. We may find ourselves coming out with connections we’d never realized were possible.

Read Also: Dating Tips for an Anxious Attachment Style