#MissingLove: Chilean Artist’s Missed Connection in NYC & The Statistics on Love at First Sight
New York commuter and Chilean artist Maria Luisa Portuondo Vila believes that she saw the man of her dreams on her way home, and she's elected the whole city of New York to help her reconnect with him.
Vila plastered posters with the man's image on it around the city. The headline of the advert boldly states "Pay attention NY! This is about my heart," and the composite sketch of the 6-foot-1 man with alabaster skin shows a top hat crowning a head full of long wavy hair.
Vila, 30, and the charming stranger's eyes met one evening in November on a Brooklyn-bound 'A' train. When she saw him, she immediately thought, "He was so handsome. He caught my attention because we exchanged glances, and in New York, that's so difficult. In Chile everyone looks at you, but here, no. Nobody looks at you. So we looked at each other and I felt food."
The Chilean-born artist is interning at the Textile Arts Center in the West Village. She arrived from Santiago, Chile in November and only has until March to find the man who was clad in yellow pants and a denim jacket, before she returns to Chile.
The young woman has turned her quest to find her would-be lover into a project called, "Missing Love," and has created a hashtag #missinglove in order to elicit help from the Twitter users to help her find him.
A realist, Vila doesn't expect to start a relationship with him, as she will be going back to Santiago in March, but she want an opportunity to get to know him. She also stated that she feels like he's her "victim" due to the extreme measures that she's gone to in order to find him.
When she saw him that evening, she intended to give him her contact information and found a slip of paper with a drawing of a tree on it in her bag and scribbled down her e-mail address. Planning to pass the paper to him, the subway car was flooded by passengers as Vila exited the train at 14th street, and the two were separated forever.
Between naysayers and the Hollywood-fueled general public, there's debate over the existence of love at first sight. Earl Naumann, writer of Love at First Sight: The Stories and Science Behind Instant Attraction, indicates that there is science behind instant attraction. He states that relationships that are initiated by "love at first sight" feel longer and stronger love than relationships prompted by other types of love.
Nearly two-thirds of the population believe in love at first sight, according to Naumann. He also found that 55 percent of marriages have "love at first sight" roots, and 75 percent of those couples were still married. Also, social scientists and biologists suggest that the smell and ingestion of pheromones are recognized in others who we deem to be "special."