Love at first sight!

Let's say you get lucky tomorrow and spot a Potential Love Partner. He or she is sitting on the steps reading a book. Or standing in a museum studying a painting. Or getting on the bus. Or waiting in line at the bank cash machine. You sneak a second peek. Something about the stranger revs up your internal PEA factory, and a little dollop goes squirting through your veins. Maybe it's her looks, the way he moves, something she's wearing. Her aura? Is this love at first sight? Does love at first sight even exist?

Well, that's a semantics question. Instant desire, or lust at first sight, definitely exists. However, the scientific world pretty well agrees that love at first sight is merely Monday-morning quarterbacking. A successful love affair, perhaps one leading to marriage, is retrospectively declared to be true love; whereas if one is rebuffed, it is classified . . . as infatuation.'' Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality Semantics aside, one fact remains. Any small stimulus can kick-start love. Your first moves when

Love Partner are crucial. If, from that powerful stimulus, love grows, you have every right to call it love at first sight. Nobody will argue with you. Love at first sight has survived because it is an integral part of the many popular beliefs about romantic love. Romantic love is an important cultural value to Americans. In the same way that a voodoo curse causes death only in persons who believe in its power to kill them, love at first sight truly exists for those who believe in it.

A man may be classified as a breast man, a buttocks man, or a leg man. And, although many women will insist otherwise, most women are certified butt watchers. (This is not just idle conjecture: a British study determined that these are people's favorite eyeball destinations.) But researchers have ascertained that everybody is an eye person. When you were a teenager being reluctantly or otherwise introduced to strangers, your parents probably told you, "Look right into their eyes."

And then they would tell you in no uncertain terms that any of the aforementioned anatomical locations were strictly off limits. Powerful eye contact immediately stimulates strong feelings of affection. This was proved once and for all in a study called "The Effects of Mutual Gaze on Feelings of Romantic Love." Researchers put forty-eight men and women who didn't know each other in a big room. They gave them directions on how much eye contact to have with their partners during casual conversation. Afterward, the researchers asked each participant how he or she felt about the various people they had spoken with.