Is Love Random?

[SassyLady]

Interesting article on if things in your life happen by acts of fate...or just by chance...



How did you meet your lover? Your spouse? Your date from last Friday night? Was it love at first sight, a predetermined order or something out of your control entirely?

Questions like this may keep obsessive compulsives up at night, but the true answer can be boiled down to randomness. At least according to Dr. Leonard Mlodinow.

"One of the most profound effects of randomness is how it affects who we meet," says Mlodinow, who appears at the Santa Rosa Junior College on Feb. 9. "Sometimes we tend to assume there is a cause for everything—not that there isn't a cause for everything, but the cause can be unrelated to the event."
His book The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives is not about the stumble between downtown watering holes, as one might think, but about how our lives are affected by chance and random occurrences. These factors may play a more prominent role than we realize, he argues.

Sometimes the strongest relationships begin by chance. You lingered longer than normal for that second cup of coffee or took the elevator on a whim instead of the stairs, and in the process met someone special. If more people accepted randomness as playing a large part of shaping our lives, Mlodinow asserts, it could affect their outlook on life. "You would judge people differently," he says. "You wouldn't judge people on results. You'd have to look deeper."

http://www.bohemian.com/northbay/is-...nt?oid=2276003

Wow.....freaky!! This is where I met my ex-hubby. Signed up for three classes and had to drop one due to not meeting with counselor prior to sign ups. I "randomly" chose a class to drop. Good thing it wasn't Intro to Supervisory Management because that was the class we took and where we met.

Talk about an even more random thing. I was in love at first sight! Hot, hot, hot and smart. However, after the second class I found out he was married because he was talking about the day care center he built for his wife to take care of their kids and family members kids. So, I said to self ".....@#$!!#$##$## why are all the good ones married?" Then I got to the business of just focusing on my school work. After two months we were both walking out to parking lot with another of our classmates and when I got to my car I discovered that he was parked in the next slot. What are the odds of that happening? I had my mini-schnauzer in the back seat and he saw her and said "I used to have one." I asked what happened to it and he said his ex-wife had it.

I said "DO YOU WANT TO GO HAVE SOME HOT CHOCOLATE?" He said yes ........ and so did the other girl. Well, the three of us went out that night and talked about the class. The next week and couple of more people showed up and pretty soon we had about 6-7 regulars. At the end of our fourth month of class I figured he was never going to ask me out and was happy to do the group get together once a week. The night of the Rodney King riots the teacher called me and said class was cancelled and because I was the point-person on the phone tree I called everyone. When I got to future/ex-hubby and told him class was cancelled and then said, "If you don't have any plans, perhaps we can get together for dinner instead."

See, us cougars are pretty smart that way. I knew he didn't have plans because I didn't give him enough time. Well, we went to dinner and two months later he moved in with me and 18 months after that we were married.

So, was it pre-determined because we overcame so many obstacles? Or was it randomness? Definitely love (lust?) at first sight.

[Dilloduck]

Wow.....freaky!! This is where I met my ex-hubby. Signed up for three classes and had to drop one due to not meeting with counselor prior to sign ups. I "randomly" chose a class to drop. Good thing it wasn't Intro to Supervisory Management because that was the class we took and where we met.

Talk about an even more random thing. I was in love at first sight! Hot, hot, hot and smart. However, after the second class I found out he was married because he was talking about the day care center he built for his wife to take care of their kids and family members kids. So, I said to self ".....@#$!!#$##$## why are all the good ones married?" Then I got to the business of just focusing on my school work. After two months we were both walking out to parking lot with another of our classmates and when I got to my car I discovered that he was parked in the next slot. What are the odds of that happening? I had my mini-schnauzer in the back seat and he saw her and said "I used to have one." I asked what happened to it and he said his ex-wife had it.

I said "DO YOU WANT TO GO HAVE SOME HOT CHOCOLATE?" He said yes ........ and so did the other girl. Well, the three of us went out that night and talked about the class. The next week and couple of more people showed up and pretty soon we had about 6-7 regulars. At the end of our fourth month of class I figured he was never going to ask me out and was happy to do the group get together once a week. The night of the Rodney King riots the teacher called me and said class was cancelled and because I was the point-person on the phone tree I called everyone. When I got to future/ex-hubby and told him class was cancelled and then said, "If you don't have any plans, perhaps we can get together for dinner instead."

See, us cougars are pretty smart that way. I knew he didn't have plans because I didn't give him enough time. Well, we went to dinner and two months later he moved in with me and 18 months after that we were married.

So, was it pre-determined because we overcame so many obstacles? Or was it randomness? Definitely love (lust?) at first sight.

Chemistry and timing

[KitchenKitten99]

How did you meet your lover? Your spouse? ... Was it love at first sight, a predetermined order or something out of your control entirely?

Ok, gonna be straight up and forward with this: he was supposed to be a one-night stand for me. My divorce was still pending (yeah yeah, bad me, I know, shaddap!) and I was kind of re-discovering and reclaiming myself and just wanted to go out and have fun, no strings, no commitments, nothing but fun.

I did make sure we met at a daytime, neutral location before we went on any other kind of date. So... we met, chatted, and agreed to go out. He found out that I was applying to culinary school and he is very much into the restaurant scene as well. So he made a reservation at Benihana, which at that point, I had never been to.

His divorce was made final only weeks before we met so he wasn't looking for commitment either. He made that VERY clear, lol.

However... After that one date, he kept calling me and wanting to go out. Soon became a regular thing. I told myself I wouldn't get involved deeply because he didn't want that. However, things progressed, we had lots of fun taking our kids to the theme parks here, and we found we had lots in common. Doesn't hurt that I really did see myself with him long-term, but didn't let myself get too attached in case he decided to bolt. But he didn't do that. He admitted about 6 months into our relationship that he was falling in love with me. I had fallen for him long before that but I still had that emotional 'wall' up just in case. He still didn't want marriage (pretty adamant about it too), and I was ok with that.

But... here we are, together 3 years, and celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary on Sunday. He proposed the weekend my dad and I first met.

I could not say it was love at first sight, but I could definitely not get him out of my head, and apparently since he kept calling me, I had the same effect on him.