Before it became a classic rom-com trope, the idea of falling in love at first sight appeared in some of humanity’s oldest stories, myths and fables. In ancient mythology, for example, Cupid falls in love with Psyche the moment he lays eyes on her. Centuries later, Romeo and Juliet only needed to glance at each other at a party to seal their romantic – and ultimately tragic – fate. It’s exactly these kinds of stories that Tristan Mick, a 19-year-old in Atlanta, was calling bullshit on while debating “amor a primera vista” in his high school Spanish class. “I decided that love at first sight was just a plot device to hasten love stories without doing the labour of what building love entailed,” he says. Then he went to college, took a drive to Chipotle with some fellow frat brothers, and fell in love at first sight – just not romantically.
The moment Mick met some of his now-closest friends over a slop bowl was one he describes as “fantastical”. They clicked “without saying a word” before laughing like old friends the entire drive. In other words: amor a primera vista! But until recently, the most popular, dramatic, instantaneous and fated love stories have largely left friendships out of the equation. Immediate chemistry was celebrated as true love, whereas friendship was understood as something built gradually, over time. Mick decided we needed an updated term for love at first sight’s less popular but more relatable sister: the kind of new friendship that somehow skips the usual awkwardness of getting to know someone. Last month, he posted a video on TikTok calling it “friends at first sight”. In the comments, people shared stories of falling instantly – and platonically – in love.
Mick believes that becoming friends at first sight is “more complicated” than love at first sight, which could easily be translated to infatuation. “Friends at first sight holds all the magic that rom-coms have been trying to convince us is waiting for us romantically because, unlike love at first sight, lust isn’t a factor,” he says. “It’s purer, or at the very least less deceptive.” It’s a perspective that matches the current climate – people often talk about Gen Z as a generation that’s failing romantically, meanwhile recent data from Bumble shows that 84 per cent of Gen Z say their platonic friendships are just as (or even more) important than romantic relationships. Another 2024 report from UCLA indicates that teens want less romance on screen and more platonic relationships.
Young people today are reconsidering the hierarchy we’ve long imposed on different kinds of love. “Our culture treats romantic love as the most important love or main event and every other relationship as the supporting cast,” says Rachel Wright, a psychotherapist based in New York. (There’s even a name for it, coined by philosopher Elizabeth Brake: amatonormativity.) “Inside that frame, an instant spark with a stranger only ‘counts’ if it might lead to dating.” But people are growing increasingly sceptical of the idea of love at first sight in a romantic setting. Wright points to a 2017 study that found so-called “love at first sight” was largely driven by strong physical attraction, rather than anything deeper or more cosmic.
At a time when people are becoming more critical of how we approach relationships – amid dating apps, endless discourse and constant advice about how to connect – could friendship be taking on a new kind of importance? Angel Mfeka, a 24-year-old in South Africa, says that, especially for girls and women, there’s long been little vocabulary for expressing just how deeply we can love our friends. Conversations around “friends at first sight” can help put words to platonic feelings that have historically been undervalued or dismissed.
“Friends at first sight holds all the magic that rom-coms have been trying to convince us is waiting for us romantically because, unlike love at first sight, lust isn’t a factor. It’s purer, or at the very least less deceptive”
Mfeka, for example, says all of her friendships have happened at first sight. For her, it goes like this: she sees someone, and she immediately imagines how she would save their name in her phone and which emojis she’d use. “People have crushes all the time; why can’t I have a friend-crush on someone?” says Mfeka. “It’s knowing that I want this specific person in my community, and I want to be in theirs for as long as we allow each other.” If that sounds romantic to you, Mfeka would agree: she says her friendships can feel romantic in their own way. In fact, she feels there’s a special element to friendship that romantic relationships can’t always provide.
Miriam Kirmayer, a clinical psychologist and friendship expert, says she’s seeing people becoming increasingly open to different types of relational experience more broadly. They are questioning why people seek therapy as couples and families, but rarely as friends. Or why are there social norms and expectations on how to approach potential romantic partners, but none of those exist for building platonic relationships? “There’s an emphasis that was placed on romantic relationships as a sign of greater social success when really what we are seeing now is that friendship is not only another important relationship in our lives; it’s a uniquely important relationship,” she says. “It’s understandable to long for friendship at first sight because it feels clear – but we also need to open ourselves up to the discomfort of nuance and ambiguity.”
Whether you believe in amor a primera vista or not, there’s still a risk of importing the same surface-level, aesthetics-driven assumptions we’ve learned from dating into friendship. That’s not to say friendship chemistry isn’t real – Kirmayer says there’s both anecdotal and empirical research to support it. But, like in the dating app world, we also live in a society that prioritises speed over depth. “When friendship chemistry happens, that’s fantastic, and we need to be able to spot it and take steps to capitalise on that and move a potential friendship forward,” says Kirmayer. “But we do get ourselves into trouble when we expect that that’s how close relationships develop, and that’s how ‘good’ friendships should begin.”
Instead of writing off a potential new friend because there was, in fact, some awkwardness – as there often is at the start of any relationship – you can also take matters into your own hands. Kirmayer says to look for similarities as a starting point for friendship compatibility, and to put yourself in situations where you’ll likely find people you have something in common with. Wright says to act quickly and suggest plans within a few days, but then let the friendship grow at its own pace. After all, there’s a report that found it takes roughly 50 hours of time together to move from mere acquaintance to casual friend, and more than 200 hours to become a close friend. “The click gets you in the door, but showing up again and again is what builds the friendship,” she says.
For every story where someone immediately clicked with a new best friend, there’s another where the connection took time – or they didn’t even like each other at first – before a beautiful friendship unfolded. (I know I can think of a few examples of each in my own life.) Still, since romantic sparks have had centuries of attention, it’s about time what Mick calls the “electric feeling” of finding a new bestie gets its moment. “Friendship at first sight proves that platonic soulmates exist, and they deserve just as much romanticising,” he says. “Finding your person doesn’t always mean finding a partner; sometimes it just means getting into a car to go to Chipotle and realising your life just got a whole lot louder and brighter.”