Love at First Sight…or Love at First Story?

A Story from the Wandering & Wooing Series

Written by Joni Roberts

Traveler, storyteller, and public health advocate

"I knew the moment I saw him."

"I knew she was the one."

"When you know, you know."

We've all heard it.

Some of us have probably even said it.

Love at first sight.

It's one of those ideas we've inherited without ever really interrogating it.

Movies love it.

Books celebrate it.

Songs are written about it.

And maybe...

Maybe it's real.

The more I travel, the less I believe in love at first sight. I think we fall in love with stories.

When Wycliffe met me in Kenya, it didn't take long before he began telling me who I was.

"You are one of the angels the Bible talks about."

"You are different."

"You are so jovial."

"I just feel light when I'm around you."

"You are exactly what I've been looking for."

It was sweet.

Creative.

A little ridiculous.

And undeniably entertaining.

But it also made me laugh because I kept thinking the same thing.

You don't know me.

You know I smiled.

You know I laughed at your jokes.

You know I was willing to have a conversation.

That's it.

Everything else...

You invented.

I don't mean that unkindly.

I think it's something all human beings do.

Our brains hate uncertainty.

So when we meet someone intriguing, we begin filling in the blanks.

She's kind.

He's ambitious.

She's adventurous.

He's emotionally mature.

She's family-oriented.

He's trustworthy.

We collect a handful of observations.

Then we write an entire novel around them.

Travel has made me realize just how quickly we do this.

When you're constantly meeting new people, every interaction is an introduction.

A taxi driver.

A hotel receptionist.

A fellow traveler.

A tour guide.

Someone you meet over dinner.

Most of those conversations end exactly where they began.

But every now and then, someone decides they've met their person.

After twenty minutes.

Sometimes less.

One of the things I've found myself saying over and over again is,

"You know nothing about me."

Sometimes I say it jokingly.

Sometimes I'm completely serious.

"I could be a serial killer."

That usually gets a laugh.

But underneath the joke is a genuine question.

How could you possibly know?

You don't know how I handle disappointment.

You don't know whether I'm patient.

You don't know what makes me angry.

You don't know how I spend money.

You don't know whether I leave dishes in the sink.

You don't know whether I snore.

You don't know any of the ordinary things that actually sustain relationships.

You know the woman who's on holiday.

The woman who's curious.

The woman who's smiling because she's in a new country.

That's real.

But it's not all of me.

The older I get, the more suspicious I become of certainty.

Not because I don't believe in love.

I absolutely do.

I just think love asks more of us than immediate certainty.

It asks us to stay.

To observe.

To witness another person through seasons.

Through grief.

Through stress.

Through boredom.

Through ordinary Tuesdays.

Travel has taught me that people are easy to admire in extraordinary moments.

Relationships are built in ordinary ones.

Perhaps that's why I told my ex-husband I was still collecting data.

He wanted to know where we were headed.

I wanted to know who we both were.

Not just on our best days.

On our ordinary days.

Our frustrating days.

Our exhausted days.

The data mattered.

Because attraction can happen in an instant.

Understanding cannot.

There's another side to this that I've been thinking about.

Projection isn't always romantic.

Sometimes we project onto places too.

People ask me all the time what my favorite country is.

I usually hesitate.

Not because I don't have favorites.

Because every place has surprised me.

I've arrived expecting one story.

And left with another.

Countries deserve the same grace we hope people receive.

The opportunity to be more complicated than our first impression.

Maybe that's why wandering has become such a powerful teacher.

Travel refuses to let me settle for simple narratives.

Every destination complicates something I thought I knew.

Every person reminds me that first impressions are exactly that.

First.

Not final.

When I think back to the men who have declared their affection for me after only a brief

conversation, I smile.

Not because I think they're foolish.

Because I recognize something deeply human.

Hope.

Hope is a beautiful thing.

Hope allows us to imagine possibility.

Hope helps us see what could be.

The challenge comes when hope becomes certainty before curiosity has had a chance

to do its work.

I've come to believe that curiosity is one of the most loving things we can offer another person.

Not assumptions.

Not projections.

Curiosity.

The willingness to ask,

"Who are you?"

Instead of deciding,

"I already know."

Maybe that's what love really is.

Not certainty.

Not chemistry.

Not even compatibility.

Maybe love begins with the humility to admit that another person is always more complex than the story we've written about them.

And maybe wandering has taught me the same lesson.

Every person.

Every country.

Every culture.

Every conversation.

Deserves more than a first draft.

What I'm Still Wandering...

Have I ever fallen in love with a person, or have I sometimes fallen in love with the story

I created about them?

How often do we confuse chemistry with certainty?

What would dating look like if curiosity mattered more than confidence?

Why are we so uncomfortable admitting that we don't know someone yet?

And perhaps the question I find myself returning to most often...

How much of life becomes richer when we replace assumptions with observation?

I don't have the answer.

But every country I visit reminds me that people are infinitely more interesting than the stories we write about them after the first hello.

I'm still collecting data.

And I'm still wandering.