I guess it IS a thing. I mean, when you meet someone, there is a chance that you are immediately interested, so there must be a chance that they are immediately interested as well. There is a chance that you both discover this and there is a chance that those feelings persist long enough for a relationship to develop. Hence, I guess that love on first sight is a theoretical possibility, the likelihood of which still needs to be assessed, however.
This is where the trouble starts, because I don't think it is very likely. And no matter how likely it is, it (obviously) doesn't happen every time you meet someone, so there is a counter-probability of it not happening. Given that life is finite and you meet only a finite amount of people, there must be the possibility that it never happens to you in your lifetime (Yeah, I know, I'm assuming these probabilities to be equal and independent, which I probably shouldn't, but this part is for illustrative purposes only). I'm pretty certain that not everyone is destined to experience it.
I guess many people just accept it at some point. Just as much as they accept that the fairy tales of romanticism are not true. They stick to what they have. Maybe they've been rolling their eyes throughout this entire series and said "Nobody *actually* believes these things, you idiot. We tell these stories because they make us feel good, not because we believe them to be absolutely true. Do you still believe in Santa Claus or what???"
I get it. Maybe my life is a joke about me that everyone except me gets. But I still take issue with the way these thoughts dominate our culture. I don't feel comfortable with the unwritten and unspoken rules and rituals we have established for finding "love", whatever that is. And most of all, I *hate* how much conformity with these standards seems to define our value as people.
When we think of romanticism, we rarely think of peer pressure and bullying. Yet, I feel like that's what it is, at its core.
