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Summary:

This article is based on a sociological research (Schurmans & Dominice, 1997) the objective of which consists in understanding the impact of the collective organization on the management of individual experiences which, such as the occurrence of love, seem most private. A study on site made it possible to collect 250 interviews, from a balanced cohort of persons who have experienced ''love at first sight''. The statistical and thematic exploitation of the material indicates two typical-ideals to which the experiences refer. There is, on the one hand, the immediate love the instantaneous characteristic of which is doubled with that of a lack of social media coverage and, on the other hand, of the constructed love the progressive aspect of which gives room to the social orchestration of its genesis.

The results demonstrate that an immediate love can only be understood with its contrary, the ''mediate'' love. The dual symbolism of the fire -the uncontrolled lightning strike fire and the tamed figure of the friction fire- generates two logics which are opposite yet articulated, in which the negation of time and of sociality faces the necessary inscription of amorous stories in a temporal process and in a system of social relationships.