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Why Frances Abbott’s whirlwind engagement is the way to live for love

Frances Abbott is ready for marriage.

Frances Abbott is ready for marriage. Photo: Sarah Kinsella

Frances Abbott, if you love a man enough after two weeks to be planning a wedding, you are intuitive, you’re intelligent, you’re gutsy –and you’re doing the right thing, lady.

The former first daughter’s Instagram announcement about Olympian Sam Loch had clarity and confidence, and no hint of indecisive wringing of hands or tedious seeking of opinions from anyone. It’s perfect.

“Two weeks was all it took to know that forever with you was a mighty fine idea,” she posted, saying she is “crazy in love” with her “Feyonce”.

And the killer hashtag: “Why wait?”

Why indeed? If you know, you know.

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Ask Matt Damon. “I’m sure I felt love at first sight with my wife, I really am,” he said of seeing Luciana Barroso across a Miami room in 2003.

“It was like there was a beam of light shining down on. I was like, I have to talk to this person.” And marry her and have a bunch of kids.

Or Chris Hemsworth. In 2015 he described to Elle when he knew Elsa Pataky, mother of his three children, was “the one”, saying: “From the first time we met, we just made sense.”

And when Colin Firth first saw Livia Giuggioli, his now-wife of 20 years, in a Colombian street, he knew he was done: “It was a bolt to the heart.”

Love instantly – and win

My philosophy has always been if you don’t love something instantly – a pair of shoes, a house, a partner – you never will. They might be a practical addition to your life, but if there’s no instant connection and if you have to turn it over in your mind, forget it.

Those shoes won’t get worn. The house will always have something missing. And the partner will make you wistful and itchy for the life you should have had.

We know you’re tough, Frances – the bodybuilder intensity and crusading for same-sex marriage against your ex-PM father – but this move also means you’re emotionally smart because you know what you want.

Sam Loch is a catch. Photo: Twitter

Ignore the naysayers, those who would dredge up intellectual arguments about the greatest emotion, those who look to psychology books for validation of what is surely the antithesis of academia or rationality.

Ignore those who say you need to spend lots of time with someone to truly know them. It’s rubbish. You probably will never truly know someone, and you don’t need to.

What you do need is the same sense of humour, and the same amount of either brains or energy. You need a feeling of recognition that this person is meant to be with you.

Frances, if you feel it, grab it. If you don’t feel it, you don’t have it.

Both times, I fell in love with my husbands at first sight, or at least I knew at first sight they were meant for me.

The first time, I was 17 and among the September holiday crowds on the beach at Surfers Paradise was a skinny boy with great shoulders. I looked at him and said to myself: “Ah, there you are.”

We kissed that night over Black Russians as Dragon steamed through a set at Bombay Rock, married seven years later, and had three children and decades of fun and love together.

Second time was just as obvious to me: a photo on Facebook of one of my brother’s old school friends. I hadn’t seen or heard from him for over 10 years, but saved the shot – an old one of him in his navy uniform, hair cropped, face beautiful – because my inner voice was at work again: “It’s you.”

And it was. After one night which meshed eight hours of conversation, a murderous movie albino and dancing to Air Supply’s back catalogue on vinyl, we were on forever.

Frances, I wish you the same enormous happiness.

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