Wow! This is my very first blog posting. I’m a little nervous, a little shy, but I thought I’d jump right in and say a big old “Hi!”

If you’ve found your way to this page, you’ll know that my name is Amanda Canham & I’m an emerging contemporary romance writer. More specifically, my first novel – A Life Worth Living, published by Escape Publishing on the 1st December 2013 – is a medical romance, set in my (new) hometown of Brisbane, Australia in the ever-growing field of sleep medicine. This is the first of (hopefully) many more to come, though finding a man as dreamy as Dr Cam may prove difficult – and trust me, he’s as scrumptious on the inside as he is on that cover!

Okay, enough spruiking. I do promise to try to limit the spiels in this blog. My aim, as the blog title suggests, is to spend this time discussing romance. Now I don’t mean elements of a romantic novel, or the latest social goss on who’s hooked up with who. I want to breakdown & discuss the nature of human romantic behaviour – the myths, the truths, & how we all really feel (yes, my psychology background is trying to break free).

So, the first topic I want to explore with you is love at first sight. 

You know what I mean – the idea that one day you’ll meet “the one” and as soon as your eyes meet there will be lightning bolts, and fireworks and he (or she) will carry you off into the sunset to live happily ever after. Has this happened to any of you? And if it has, if you’ve had that spark on first seeing someone, did you actually walk away thinking that was the person you wanted to marry?

Me? I’m a sceptic. At least on the love part of it all. I certainly believe in lust at first sight. That spark of attraction, the chemicals or hormones in your body reacting to a person you are attracted to. And even then, I believe there are levels of attraction, and maybe there really is just one person that your body is most compatible with in a biological survival of the fittest concept. But love?

No, I’m sorry, that needs time to grow.

Psychological research in the area is conflicting, and the biggest concern from practitioners seems to be is that this concept of “love at first sight” results in people remaining in unhappy relationships because of a misconception that the feelings they experienced on first locking eyes with a person locked them in for life. But the problem with this theorising is the tendency to combine the concepts of “love at first sight” and “the one” into one broad belief that inevitably results in “the happy ever after”.

Although guilty of doing this myself, on writing this post I realised that though these are all linked, they are separate concepts (and the topics of future posts). But, just for a moment, imagine that the normal human condition was to fall in love over and over again throughout your life (and there are people that do). Does this make the concept of love at first sight more valid? Or less?

Again, it comes down to the concept of love vs lust. You know where I fall on this argument. Where do you fall?

Until next time, peeps!