In the front
section of The Washington Post, I read an interesting poll conducted by the Post
on the percentage of people that believe in love at first sight- broken down by
sex, age and political party, (very important here inside the beltway).
When the people who were polled were asked this question, they responded with
47% yes, 51% no, and only 2% had no opinion. When asked if they had ever fallen
in love at first sight the no responses were 18%, 28% said yes- and 51% said
they “don’t believe.” I found it interesting that what people say they believe
does not necessarily match up with their actual experience. It seems that many
more believe this is possible, even when they have never felt it. Hummm….
It seems that when broken
down by sex, the men came out as more romantic, as they said yes 50% of the
time, when women said yes only 44% of the time. It was also interesting to note
that of the different age groups, those who were in the 45-54 age range had the
highest % of yes responses (56%) to having this belief and the 18-34 year olds
had the lowest (39%). Not too surprising to the dems is that they came in with a
50% yes response, which was tied by Independents- with Republicans trailing at
46%.
What stood out about this poll is that it challenged several widely held myths.
Didn’t you expect women to score higher than men on love at first sight? Aren’t
we the ones that flock to chick flicks and read “romance” novels? Isn’t it also
often assumed that we start out starry eyed and romantic in our youth, and with
time and experience- become more practical (and perhaps a bit jaded?) Yet those
45-54 year olds came out on top, with the second highest group being the 55-64
year olds. I won’t make any comments about political party results- I will leave
that up to you.
The next time you find yourself acting on an assumption that men are incapable
of being romantic or that people in middle age have lost all interest in or
memory of, romantic love- stop yourself and consider the impact this could have
on your present and future relationship (s).
