This popular question has always been asked whether love at first sight is real or not. Many people claim that it exists and they have experienced it. We all have watched romantic movies and read love stories where love at first sight leads to happy-ever-after relationships. However, research says that what some people assume is love at first sight is more likely a strong physical attraction. Here are reasons that love at first sight doesn’t exist. It’s your hormones talking. Often times we confuse love at first sight with the adrenaline rush we experience after meeting someone new. That insanely gorgeous guy across the room that makes your heart skip a beat. You want him and he seems to want you, but this is NOT love. It’s not love at first sight, its ‘lust’ at first sight. You can blame your hormones for this! At the first glance we feel thrilled and attracted, but love goes far beyond that. This can be part of the process of falling in love, but think about it, is anything that that happens immediately without any effort called love? Love develops with time. The first few months of every relationship also known as the honey period are fresh and exciting. The world of romance embraces you but when this dreamy chapter is over, you get to face the reality. The relationship goes through highs and lows, and that decides how strong your love really is. It takes a lot of time to understand another person and land at the decision whether he or she is worth spending the rest of the life with or not. Love really shouldn’t be rendered by “sight” The emotion of love is something that is not developed through the eyes. Love should take some time and a substantial amount of actual interaction. When we see a good looking and beautiful person we feel an attraction towards that person’s appearance and charm. This is human nature, an attractive person is the first one to catch our attention and we are more likely to get attracted to a prettier person than to an average-looking one. Hence, love at first sight is NOT love. It is pretty shallow Let’s be real for a second and think about how shallow this idea of ‘love at first sight’ is. Loving someone just by looking at them? That is pretty low and twisted. It’s okay to fall for someone you find good looking, but you shouldn’t fall in love with a person because of that alone. The concept of love at first sight is being impressed by someone’s appearance instead of who they might be inside. Love is not a magic spell Undoubtedly, love happens without warning but true love requires effort, trust and hope to remain steadfast. Think it over if love at first sight really existed, we would stay mesmerized and awestruck forever to the first beautiful person we saw. Published in Daily Times, July 19th 2018.