You spend the next few minutes debating on how to make him notice you, so you won't have to be the one to make the first move. However, now you know that if you don't act soon, this chance will just pass you by. You casually stand up, knees going weak, losing your breath, and take the first step to his table. As you stroll those few feet that seem like miles, you imagine what it would be like to spend the rest of your life in his arms. But wait, you're getting ahead of yourself. First, you need to decide on how to initiate the conversation.
As he notices your arrival, you lock eyes, and for a second lose yourself in his gaze. At that instant, it almost feels like you know everything about each other. You offhandedly mumble some type of introduction, and luckily he invites you to sit down. Within minutes, nothing else in the world exists except for the two of you. The next hour is spent with evocative conversation, and countless laughs. The relationship seems flawlessly natural, and ends in the exchange of the seven sacred digits.
Two months later, you find yourself staring at him from across the alter as you say your "I Do's", beginning the rest of your lives together in sweet marital bliss.
Some say that you would have to be foolish to let things happen that first, but those who have experienced it before, know that love like that is indestructible. After all, it was love at first sight.
In Webster's II New Riverside Dictionary, love is defined as "1. Intense affection. 2. A feeling of attraction resulting from sexual desire. 3. Enthusiasm or fondness." However, love is much more than a dictionary definition. Love can be the purest, simplest, most intense and most powerful emotion all at the same time. It can lift our souls higher than any mountain, or take us lower than any valley. Love can go deeper than any ocean. It will fulfill our every need, make us complete, and give us the strength to finish any trial. Love lets us dream, and aspire to do things we never would have been able to have done before. Love can bring us from the deepest and darkest depression into the brightest most peaceful place in the world. However, love can also be a dangerous tool. Love is able to distract us, make us unable to focus or stay on task, and leave us unable to take any pleasure out of life.
Love at first sight is one of the most widely debated notion's in today's society. For the sake of clarity, love at first sight will be defined as falling in love with a person of the opposite sex within an hour of meeting them. (Although, in most cases, it takes less than half of that time.) While many people in today's generation do not believe in the existence of such a phenomena, more people are learning about it first hand; proving the very existence of love at first sight. For example, Anthony Walsh, in his book The Science of Love writes, " I do not mean to imply that love at first sight is a common phenomenon, although I suppose it does happen".
If you're like some people, you've only heard about love at first sight.Furthermore, if you're like those same people, you probably even dismissed it as some type of cliche or an emotional overload. However, if you're a lucky one, you've experienced the feeling of love at first sight. Within an hour of meeting someone, and maybe for you it only took a second, you experienced those tingly feelings, and the strange and powerful emotion of love. Because, after all, "at first, love can only rely on physical attraction since this is what we first see of the person".(Dallaire 2002)
Extensive research on the topic of love at first sight was performed by Naumann and Associates. This research shows that over 64 percent of the people surveyed believed in the notion of love at first sight. Of those 64 percent, more than half claimed that they had experienced love at first sight during at least one point in their life.
FACTORS OF LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
There are many factors that influence thoughts and actions in a person's life. Furthermore, there are then also factors that probably have something to do with believing in love at first sight, and or experiencing love at first sight. For instance a person's age, sex, education and ethnic background can all be considered factors in believing in this phenomenon. These factors all lead up to one general theses: love at first sight is a far more common experience than most people believe.
Love At First Sight and Age
According to research done by Naumann and Associates, love at first sight is a more common occurence in the younger generation. This research showed that 53.6 percent of all who claim to have experienced love at first sight had it happen by the age of twenty.
For males, just over half, (51.5 percent) fell in love with a woman who was of age twenty years or younger. Females however, showed a slightly different result. Only 39.4 percent of females reported falling in love with a man that was twenty years or younger. For both sexes, the most common age group for experiencing love at first sight included people from ages sixteen to twenty, and was trailed by an age group of people age twenty-one to twenty-five.
These results may be due to the fact that younger people are generally in search of love and possible mates more than an older generation would be. This causes the younger population to have a higher propensity of falling in love.