Love at first sight – the old cliché that you may have heard from many a potential partner is some cheesy chat up line, but is it actually possible? Can you really fall in love with someone at the drop of a hat?

The true definition of love at first sight is finding a connection on an emotional level with a complete stranger on the very first encounter and this is often accompanied by a very deep desire to partake in some sort of intimate relationship with the other person. Bearing this in mind, how often can you say that you have felt such a strong urge towards someone that you have only just met? You must be an awfully good judge of character to feel this way about a person on your first encounter and many of us simply do not have this ability.

Love at first sight can almost be described as a myth, many people have claimed to experience it and yet it doesn’t seem to happen to “normal” people, people like you and me that are still looking and searching for that special someone that we are willing to commit to for the rest of our lives. Describing a sensation as love at first sight is almost fairy tale in nature and we all know that most fairy tales just simply cannot be true.

There is such a thing as lust at first sight and perhaps this is very often confused with love at first sight? Having a feeling of pure sexual attraction to another person is the reason why we finding ourselves getting into an intimate relationship with a partner in the first place – we find a person that we like the look of and wish to pursue a sexual relationship and then we ask that person out on a date and the rest goes naturally from there. Perhaps this is the true definition of love at first sight – wanting someone so badly that you cannot imagine what your life will be like if you do not have that person, in the same way that you would covet a new job or a pay rise or a new top of the range car.

Love at first sight has a number of theories and examples that span back over hundreds and thousands of years. The Medieval period during the renaissance times had their own conceptions of the phrase and was considered to be something dreamt about by poets, with the gentleman glancing into the female’s eyes and falling helplessly in love. It is the stuff of fairy tales and if they could feel it all the way back then, then perhaps it is possible for us to feel a similar kind of emotion in modern society.

Whether or not you believe in love at first sight, there is no denying that the concept has been around for many years and many different people from all generations and civilizations have claimed to feel such an emotion. Maybe it’s just a few of us that are lucky enough to feel such a strong connection to someone we have only just met, and the time will come when it is our time too?