[NOTE: I’ve had this draft among my many hundreds of drafts for about sevem years. I never got around to publishing it; not sure why. But today seems like a good time to do so, for obvious reasons.]

This post of mine about love at first sight sparked a lot of discussion, including some personal stories about the phenomenon, some doubters, and some believers.

Until it happened to me I’m not sure I believed in the existence of love at first sight, either. And I certainly didn’t expect that it would ever happen to me. Indeed, the evening I met my husband-to-be, such a thing was furthest from my mind.

It was the evening of one of my very first days in law school. I had just arrived for a temporary stay in a spare room in the apartment of two other women while I looked for more permanent lodging. I was exhausted, and all I was really thinking about was that at least I had a place to sleep for a few nights. I entered a room where the two young women were talking to a young man, and I sat myself down in an available chair (a wooden rocker) to relax for the very first time that day.

And then I glanced at the man. His look intrigued and attracted me, but it wasn’t just that. He was talking to the two women, and what he said was very entertaining, witty, and humorous. They were laughing and laughing. I’ve always been attracted to humor in men, and the combination of that plus his good looks – and something else, some indefinable and indescribable perception that to this day I don’t understand, but let’s call it “connection” – was apparently all it took.

About 24 hours later I had a thought I’d never had before: “I might marry this guy.”

I was twenty-one years old. We married five years later, and although we’re divorced now we stayed married for over thirty years. Was the love real? Absolutely. And I still can’t explain the phenomenon of love at first sight.

And I’m still extremely surprised that it happened to me.