Is Love, at First Sight, True Love?

When the whirlwind called Valentine’s Day arrives, it’s easy to get caught in the moment and exclaim that love is in the air. With red and white confetti’s littering the streets to romantic hoardings and commercials the only thing that’s left is little Cupids with their bows and arrows, trumpeting and heralding ‘Behold! The season of love is here’. The magic of the season is such that you are transported to a fantastical land imagining yourself as a leading lady or man in a romantic movie and all that’s missing is a handsome stranger with whom you fall in love at first sight. However, when reality crashes, love, at first sight, seems a fiction which you may have heard from your grandparents or parents or witnessed in sappy and cliché romantic movies. However, this phenomenon of love, at first sight, remains a burning issue whether you are a hardcore romantic or cynic and needs to be contested on how close does it comes to true love.

What is love at first sight?

Almost everybody knows what love at first glance but it doesn’t hurt to brush up your memory. If you are one of those people who has experienced it then you may know the feeling where you look at a person and know that he/she is ‘the one’. It could be their beautiful face that captured your interest or their sunshine smile that stopped you in your tracks or an unexpected gesture that caught you unaware or the butterflies in your stomach that say ‘You had me at hello’. If you have experienced any of these things then you, my friend have been a fortunate victim of ‘love at first sight’ which catches its victim unaware and when they least expect it. If you happen to experience any of these symptoms it's better to act on those feelings with special Valentine gifts, as this day gives you the perfect excuse to have your chance at true love. However, if you haven’t experienced this or think of it as something which only happens in fairytale then think again because it happens more often than not, to just maybe make you believe in love at first sight.

Does love at first sight still exists?

You may be skeptical of this phenomenon but love at first glance is actually more than just a phenomenon, as this is how dating apps like Tinder and Bumble operate.  It’s true that a person’s name and credentials are viable options you look for in a possible date but your instinctual reaction will be to look up a person's picture and only then look up their bios; this is where first impression counts and we unwillingly judge a book by its cover. You may not even realize it but love at first glance is indirectly one of the strategies with which these dating apps operate.

The gift of sight is one of the very valuable gifts that also come handy for experiencing love at first sight. Scientists also suggest that this pull of attraction one feels when your eyes meet across a crowded room and the magnet like energy experienced is very much real. This pull of attraction that looks promising and enticing while making you want to explore it further is common to many other non-animate objects too. It could be in the form of sweet that you select among many others in a sweet shop, or a dress in a mall that catches your interest and makes you want to try it on to feel more beautiful. Similarly, love, at first sight, is based on the same parameters, only instead of consuming a sweet or trying on a dress you catch a common thread of interest and want to explore those feelings which made your insides flutter. This interest or initial chemistry may not be ‘love’ at first but attraction which makes you open to the possibility of a romantic interest you both can share. As this attraction is explored further you may later get fascinated by other quirks and habits and this like ultimately leads to love.

Therefore, along with the stories of love at first glance, there are scientific and logical reasons that state love, at first sight, is real, however, that love can last for moments, days or even a lifetime.