I was searching the web the other
day for some topic or other, I was hoping to find something on writing, when I
came across a headline insisting that scientists had proved love at first sight
exists. Now, as a romance writer I was interested in what the article had to
say, so I clicked on the link only to discover they weren’t talking about love,
but rather attraction.
The whole thing was how people
determine ATTRACTION a lot faster than most people think, as in milliseconds,
but well, attraction isn’t love, so I’m going to have to beg to differ with
them, big time.
I do agree that people determine
attractiveness really fast, but attractiveness doesn’t mean love, because, let’s
face it, physical attractiveness doesn’t equal a really nice guy who you can
get along with for the rest of your life.
I have a line in one my unfinished
stories where the heroine cautions herself saying, “Careful! Gaston was good
looking too.”
And I’m right. Everyone reading
this post, stop right now and think. Name someone you know of who is physically
attractive but when you get to know that person they aren’t so nice down deep.
I’m stuck on Gaston because all the really good-looking guys
I’ve known over the years, guys I was attracted to back in the day, they’re also
nice men (some of them I’m friends with on Facebook) but well, in the long run,
I don’t think I’d have been able to get along with them day in and day out.
None of them have the patience Tom had, and I have to admit I’ve got a temper.
On top of that Tom wasn’t in league with the Gastons of the
world. Average height, average build, light brown hair and brown eyes, nothing
special in the looks department. In fact, when my roommates learned I was going
to ask him out, all of them said, “Ew! Why would you want to date him?”
Number one, I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend.
I invited him to dinner, because a mutual friend said he
could use some cheering up, nothing more. I wasn’t planning more than just the
one dinner. In fact, I was planning to be unavailable for any further dates for
the week after that dinner, and to be leaving town when the week was over.
Things just didn’t turn out that way. Actually, the song “Frog
Kissing” comes to mind when I think about those days. I kissed me a frog and
got a prince!
In other words, I love Tom with all my heart, but he didn’t
have anything to physically attract me to him, and I know the difference
because I’ve had more than my fair share of crushes, including celebrity
crushes, and attraction does not in any sense of the word equal love. It equals
lust, but lust isn’t love! It never has been, and never will be.
So, while I have may have a hard time getting my characters
to take their time and actually fall in love, I also know that they are moving
too fast. I have to find the fine line between too fast and too slow in my stories,
but I do realize they are going too fast evidenced in a discussion two of my
characters have in one of my unfinished stories.
In that one, they are assigned to write a believable story
that had them getting together the previous school year, and were now married
and expecting, for their class and the two of them knew they could have teamed
up for a duet in a band competition the year before so they went with that, but
the heroine insisted that they absolutely could NOT kiss the first time they got
together to practice because that would mean their relationship was purely
physical and it was nothing to base a marriage on.
I wrote that, I know that. I just have trouble showing that
on the page.
Actually, one of my stories, the one which is totally
finished, I’ve had problems with critiques saying they fall in love too fast.
None of those people ever seem to get the fact that my main characters aren’t human,
and they pair up by forming a “connection”. I have it in the story where the
hero tells his dad, “I love her,” and his dad replied, “Well, of course you do,
with the connection you have no choice.”
That’s an exact quote, yet people complain they fell in love
too fast.
That’s not to say I don’t have a problem with them getting
together too soon, falling in love too fast, I know I have that problem in my
other stories, just not this one.
Anyway, happy writing everyone!
