BBC Culture recently had a great little video about the Japanese words and concepts of Koi No Yokan, meaning the feeling upon first meeting someone that you will inevitably fall in love with them. Watch the video in the link to learn more.

Not knowing Japanese, but seeing what was described in the video and interpreting it as best I could, I would describe Koi No Yokan as a feeling towards a person (who could be a potential partner for you) about whom you’re not crazy upon meeting, and maybe even for the first little while in knowing them, but in whom you see something appealing that you feel could grow on you over time to overcome whatever it is about them you’re not crazy about, and turn to love. Much more wordy than the given definition, but I think helps explain it a bit more clearly.

In my life experience, Koi No Yokan, if it’s what I explained it to be, usually come in the form of some personality trait/s of a woman, that will overcome what I think as a lack of physical attractiveness about her. I’m not talking about ugly, though, in lack of physical attractiveness to the extent that wouldn’t care to date her, or maybe look twice, on looks alone. But then I meet her or see her going about in life, and my heart raises one eyebrow about how there might be something interesting about her after all that I’d want to get to know her more! I’ve never had a way to summarize that nicely until I heard about Koi No Yokan recently, and I am glad I know about it now!

In the BBC video, they also talk about how Koi No Yokan is different from Hitomebore, which is a Japanese word for the English expression love at first sight. That, I think, most of us could relate to better than Koi No Yokan. With those two concepts in my love world now having a name, I only need one more to complete the system of similar concepts, and that is a word or phrase for what I’ll call UNlove at first contact.

That concept, to me, is for the women I’ve met in life who could have qualified for love at first sight based on their looks AND some characteristics. Looks alone would be lust at first sight, for which I created my own expression to give it a name so I don’t need a word for that, with the expression easily enough to understand for most. UNlove at first contact, meanwhile, is a bit more foreign to explain. It’s basically the concept of something done by someone early in the first encounter (not necessarily first action), that reveals a “deal breaker” factor to you to know you absolutely could not love them as a partner. The common example of that for me would be a woman lighting up to smoke.

So does anybody know of a word in any language that generally means UNlove at first contact? 🙂