You make your way across the busy airport. Through the chaos, everyone seems to disappear, and you two are the only ones left in the room. Your eyes lock and a spark is lit; it is love at first sight. Then you snap out of it because this only happens in a Hallmark movie.  

Love at first sight has been something people have been told about since they could comprehend what love is. It leads people to believe that they will find their soulmate by just taking a glance at the stranger next to them. Is love really as easy as looking at someone? 

A study in the Netherlands suggests that people do experience the electric feeling of love at first sight, but it is not the same love that is in a relationship. The “love” the test subjects felt was a physical attraction, which is much different than loving the person. The feeling is not necessarily love but an attraction that makes people more open to a relationship. The feelings you get when you are in love, like intimacy and passion, are not strong or even there at all when someone experiences love at first sight. 

The study also proved that people tend to experience love at first sight with more attractive people. The subjects were more likely to say they experienced love with people who ranked higher on an attractiveness scale that researchers came up with. One rating higher on the scale would increase the chances nine times of someone saying they loved the person. 

The love experienced when you first see someone is nothing compared to the love you experience after getting to know the person. True love is falling in love with the person’s heart, not how they look. Love is defined as a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. Nothing about appearance is mentioned because it does not affect true love. 

However, some couples claim when they first laid eyes on each other they knew. Sometimes people put off a certain vibe that attracts their partner, and they feel an instant connection. Science can study subjects and take surveys, but people who have experienced it are the only ones who can truly tell how they feel. A scientist cannot tell someone how they feel or that their feelings are wrong. 

Also, people who are into zodiac signs claim they feel a connection with their most compatible sign. If someone truly feels the spark associated with love, no one can tell them they are wrong. Love at first sight is not just for hopeless romantic; normal people say they just knew the second they saw them. 

Although some people claim to experience it, science has extensively proved it to be more lust than love. Being in love brings more intense emotions than liking the person’s appearance. Loving someone makes you feel different about the person than lust does.  

The butterflies in your stomach when you see an attractive person are a different kind of nervous than the kind you get when you truly care for someone enough to say you love them. The word love has become more casual and saying it too people is not as big of a deal anymore. Couples say they love each other after only a few days of dating. 

Saying you love someone after seeing them for the first time takes away from the importance of the word.  Love is so much more than a word to put in a cheesy Instagram caption. It is a huge way to say that you will do anything for the other person because they mean that much to you. So maybe Hallmark movies are unrealistic, but we all have a chance to fall in love.