Love At First Sight / Real Life

• Research has shown that this phenomenon is actually a memory trick, in which emotions of the present get inserted into the memories of the past.
• "Love" at first sight can be linked with obsessive-love disorder.
• Mark Twain supposedly said that he saw a picture of his future wife, Olivia, and fell in love at first sight.
• Thomas Hardy claimed to have, on seeing his future partner for the first time, realized instantly that he would marry her (not necessarily the same thing). Much like his novels, the two did not have a happily ever after.
  • The same is said of Carl Jung.
• Steve Irwin and his widow, Terri, both said that they literally fell in love at first sight. Steve was about to feed a crocodile at the time, and he was so spellbound by Terri that the crocodile nearly grabbed him. Ironically, Terri has also said that she had never believed in love at first sight until then — and that she knew three days after she met him that "destiny had taken hold". They were engaged only four months and three meetings later.
• Shown to have some basis in science — the first few minutes of a relationship have shown to be predictive of the relationship's future success, more so than what two people have in common or whether they like each other. DAMN.
  • Makes sense since it's human nature to always rely on first impressions even when they get contradicted later.
    • Well, within reason, anyways.
  • Research has also shown that 'sex chemistry' rarely lasts beyond a year, maybe two at the most. Thankfully that's long enough for a more stable relationship to evolve — sometimes.
• Joanna "The Mad" of Castile and Aragon (what is now Spain) and Philip "The Handsome" of Burgundy turned out to be this, resulting in a Perfectly Arranged Marriage. It turned out badly, both for Joanna and Philip.
• John Barrowman of Doctor Who and Torchwood fame flat-out states in his memoir Anything Goes that he took one look at Scott Gill and knew he was the one. (Although he doesn't deny that at least some of the initial attraction was lust, he also calls what he felt a "prophetic jolt.")
• Rachel Maddow, on meeting her partner Susan Mikula: "...she opened the door and it was, like, comets and shooting stars."
• Sir Michael Caine saw Shakira Baksh in an advert for coffee, thought she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and, believing her to be in Brazil, expressed an intention to go there and find her. He was later put in touch with her by a friend; they married in 1973 and have been together ever since.
• Second sight, technically — Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis met briefly, and then were reunited at a party several years later. The way he tells it, he saw her across the room in a beautiful backless dress and then she turned and came over to talk to him, and that was it. "I'm in trouble," as he put it.
• Broadway legend Patti LuPone says of meeting future husband Matt Johnston that she took one look at him and "said no in my head and yes in my heart." She was playing Lady Bird Johnson, he was an assistant cameraman. They're still happily married.
• ...Which leads to LBJ himself, who asked Lady Bird for a date within minutes of meeting her, and asked her to marry him at the end of it. She turned him down. He wooed her assidiously for ten weeks, whereupon she agreed, though she insisted on marrying the next day, not that one. Forty years later, when he died, they were still Happily Married.
• Richard Nixon claimed that when he first met his wife, Pat, it was love at first sight. He even proposed on the first date. She politely declined, but Tricky Dick didn't let up, and they eventually got married three years later.
• According to Bill Clinton, he took one look at Hillary and promptly forgot his own name. According to both, they kept sneaking glances at each other across the Yale Law Library until she walked up to him, held out her hand, and said, "If you're going to keep looking at me, and I'm going to keep looking back, we might as well be introduced. I'm Hillary Rodham." And that, as they say, was that. Despite his philandering, he still seems to be as smitten with her as ever.
• According to how the Lees tell it, when Stan Lee first laid eyes on Joan (who, at the time, was married to someone else) he told his friend standing next to him: "I'm going to marry that woman." A few weeks later, he did.
• Acclaimed British screenwriter Heidi Thomas, responsible for, among others, Ballet Shoes, Cranford, and the massively popular Call the Midwife, met her husband Stephen McGann when he starred in one of her early plays at the Liverpool Playhouse, and she admits that it was love at first sight for both of them. Unfortunately, they were both with other people. Two years later, when they were both finally single, they started dating. Four weeks after that, McGann said, "Let's just cut to the chase," and asked her to marry him. They've been happily married for over twenty-five years.
• Tommy Lee of Mötley Crüe met Pamela Anderson at a party in February 1995, and he fell in love with her pretty much as soon as they met. Four days later, they were married. It didn't end well.
• King Frederick William III of Prussia, then still the crown prince, first met his future wife, Princess Luise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (and her younger sister Friederike) when his father introduced him to them in March 1793. Years later the king said to one of his few confidants that it immediately felt like a line from Friedrich Schiller's play Die Braut von Messina ("The Bride of Messina"): "And suddenly I felt it become clear in me: She's the one, or no one else on Earth." (Und klar auf einmal fühlt' ich's in mir werden: Die ist es, oder keine sonst auf Erden.).
• 22-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph similarly fell head over heels for his cousin Elisabeth of Wittelsbach aka Sisi, the lovely fifteen year old kid sister of Helene, the princess he was arranged to marry. Being Emperor, he got to marry the sister he wanted over the objections of both mothers. It did not turn out well: they grew apart, had affairs, sorta settled on Better as Friends, Sisi became very emotionally unstable upon the tragedies that hit her AND Franz, she ultimately was murdered and he never got over her death.
• This was meant to be an Invoked Trope when Anne of Cleves met a King Incognito Henry the Eighth, as per the court etiquette of the day. Unfortunately, no one tipped off the German princess, so she gave this strange overweight man the cold shoulder. It was not an auspicious start.
• As mentioned above under Literature John Ronald Ruel Tolkien fell in 'true and lasting love' with Edith Mary Bratt at the age of sixteen. His guardian was understandably skeptical, and even Tolkien admitted that true love striking at such an early age was perhaps not the best thing for him. Not that he let that stop him, though he did abide by his guardian's dictate that Tolkien couldn't marry until he was 21. Literally when the clock struck 12 on his birthday, Tolkien wrote a proposal letter and sent it. The two were married until the day of Edith's death.
• Greg Mortensen explains in his biography Three Cups of Tea that when he met his wife Tara at a party, he knew she was the one for him. They married six days later.
• Upon their engagement in 2017, Prince Harry said of his future bride Meghan Markle that "I knew she was The One from the very first day [they met]."
• Sam Claflin and Laura Haddock had this big time. According to Claflin, he took one look at Haddock and immediately calling his agent and telling him he’d seen the woman he was going to marry.
• Second sight, technically. Conan O'Brien met his wife while filming a bit for Late Night. They hit it off and made plans for a date. When she walked into the coffee shop where they had arranged to meet:
  "It's very hard to explain. . . but I just knew.".
• Emperor Charles V of Spain initially selected Princess Isabella of Portugal as a purely political move. When they actually met, they fell intensely in love and married that same day. Charles remained faithful to her throughout their marriage and when she died he was so distraught that he retired to a monastery for two whole months of mourning.
• King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden saw his wife through a pair of binoculars at the opening ceremony of the 1972 Munich Olympics (he was a guest, she was working as a hostess and interpreter) and something in him “clicked”. Like the Clintons above, despite some philandering on his part, they seem to still be Happily Married as of 2018.
• Stephen Colbert fell in love with his wife the second he saw her. The story is pretty adorable.
• King Abdullah II of Jordan admits to falling in love with his wife, Queen Rania, upon their first meeting.
• Tina Turner described having this feeling upon meeting Erwin Bach in 1986. They were together from then until her death on May 24, 2023.
• Though not quite "at first sight", Jeremy Shada has said that he knew he wanted to marry his wife Carolynn by the end of their first date.
• Irish poet Theo Dorgan states he experienced this when meeting fellow poet Paula Meehan. They met in 1990, and Dorgan states his first thought upon seeing her was "Ah there you are" and they've been together since. He's gone on to say "Home is wherever Paula is"
• Jamie Lee Curtis saw a picture of Christopher Guest in character as Nigel Tufnel in a magazine and instantly decided she wanted to marry him. Five months later, she did and forty years later, they're still together.

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