Desire (not love) at first sight

Back in the days when we used to live as hunters and gatherers, material wealth did not have a lot of significance, since it only meant the need to carry more objects with the tribe along their nomadic routes. This also meant that it did not make much sense to have careful claims over the lineage of the children, since tribes usually survived or perished as a whole. But then came the agrarian revolution, and the sedentary life gave property rights real meaning: the ownership of the land was crucial to your chances of survival and the material wealth was the lucky consequence of hard work, since most surplus in food production could be traded for goods that could stay in the house, now that the populations did not travel that much. But property rights also meant the beginning of inequality and this in turn had a strong impact in the survival of lineages: well-off families were less likely to starve or freeze to death over the winter even if their less fortunate neighbors did. Cruel as it might seem, it is rather common in the animal kingdom that males are most interested in spreading their genes and not so much in the survival of any individual, so it was just natural that the owner of the estate (a man) fed his progeny and not anybody else's. However, it was easier said than done.

When it comes to determining the ascendancy of a child it is almost trivial to determine the mother, since it is fairly obvious who has carried the baby in her womb. There have been cases of successful deception where the child of a teenage girl has been declared to be her sibling, but it is at least certain for the mother that the child is hers. Paternity is a different thing, because the time difference between the sexual intercourse and the first signs of pregnancy leave room for uncertainty. Even if the mother can be totally sure who the father is (if she has only had one partner), this might not be so evident for the father, who is unlikely to have had her under surveillance 24/7. This was already a problem in the early agrarian societies and brought about the concept of monogamy (particularly for women). If a woman can only have sex with her husband (under threat of eternal damnation) he can be rather sure that they children are his and are therefore entitled to the sustenance he can provide. However, there was still a small risk that a woman would come to the marriage already pregnant of another man so, as a mix of superstition and excessive zeal, the idea of virginal wives became more and more salient: a virgin woman was not only guaranteed not to bring someone else's offspring into the family, but she was also "unsoiled" by other men.

Photo: Sofi, Friedrich Paul Thumann, (1834-1908), "Cupid and Psyche"

All this applies of course only to women, because in the meantime men have been sufficiently served with prostitutes, concubines, mistresses and even rape when it suited them to satisfy the sexual "needs". For women the only choice was to comply with the patriarchal norm or be spurned and outcast, which left many women unsatisfied, with husbands whose interest was not of a sexual nature and, even if it was, was never focused on her needs and dwindled rather fast.

But as the American and French revolution swept over vast regions of the Western world, their moral ideals of justice and brotherhood woke up to the need to look beyond the material reality into something that nobody had paid much attention before: the feelings. Where Descartes more than 150 prior had dismissed them as senseless instincts that could not be controlled and served no purpose, the romantics realized the power they had to make us feel good even in the middle of a bleak situation. Suddenly every experience became memorable, even the most mundane, if you just looked at it with the right eyes. And the one perspective that proved to be really powerful was the one of love: wives and mothers were invested (coerced would be more accurately) into a branch of unconditional acceptance that was an intrinsic part of the love they had (or should have) for their family. If the husband was a drunkard that came home in the evening and beat them bloody their duty was to show their love for them by accepting the beating and even trying to be proper the next morning, because doing otherwise might destroy the family. If the son got into trouble, she should go out of her way and give up time and health to help him get out of whatever he got himself into, whether it was betting, gangs, drugs, or any other antics. All that and much more was what women have signed up under the label of "love".

Thinking about the research I did a few days ago about the phenomenon of "transfer" between a patient and a therapist, I came to the contention that the highly heralded "love at first sight" could be, in many cases, nothing more than an example of this phenomenon, particularly among women because of the level of subjugation that they have traditionally suffered, but not exclusively. If we think of a girl (or a boy) that has never received much attention neither at home nor from their peers and suddenly finds someone who would spend all their waking hours talking or being with them, it is understandable that they are ready to leave anything behind to be in this situation when somebody seems to care about them. The problem arises when reality catches up with them and the attention alone is not enough to sustain the relationship.

In fact that is the second deceptive myth about love, which can also affect people who have had partners before: anyone is susceptible of feeling attracted to someone at first sight, but that is not love, only desire, and it is completely different from being ready to spend your life with them. Because life is full of hardships it is very important that the partners have a substantially overlapping worldview, because otherwise everything becomes a fight instead of a collaboration. As a trivial example, they do not need to like exactly the same music, but it is good that there is some music that both like because otherwise it would just be impossible to listen to music together and this activity would only entail leaving one of them behind.

In that sense, modern dating apps already help breaching the gap a bit by suggesting partners with similar tastes (the matter of how similar they should be is the matter for another article), but there is a whole host of daily activities that are not covered in these apps and could be the make-or-break of a relationship. I consider myself very lucky that I had the time to get to know Karen for six years before we got married. We even lived together for some time, which allowed us to verify that the daily routines would run smoothly between us. Some religious creeds advice against the partners living together before they get married, but in my view this can only be a source of unhappiness and mutual misunderstanding that does not need to happen in the first place. Have a nice evening.