Can you picture being an incoming college freshman and scoping the Facebook Class of *insert university and year here* group in an attempt to find a roommate or a friend? Can you imagine that prospective pal turning into your significant other? Well, that is exactly what happened to me. My current boyfriend and I began to intermittently chat via Facebook through the Facebook group for my school, and we later met at orientation. I didn’t talk to Chris much prior to officially meeting him at orientation, but he still greeted me with a sincere hug when he first me. If that doesn’t scream love at first sight, then I don’t know what does!

Chris and I spoke via text even more throughout the summer following orientation, and we socialized with the same group of people during the beginning of college. This is when the dark part comes! Chris started somewhat avoiding me and acting awkward in front of me after things seemed to be going so well during the first week or so of college. Later on, when we began to date, he claimed that he never had such strong feelings for someone before and didn’t know how else to handle me.

He also feared that he would ruin things with me for some reason. However, I take this as Chris being inexperienced and have since forgiven him. The next component to our “love at first sight” saga comes from our awkward stage. For a period of a couple of weeks, Chris and I constantly spent time together and kissed without having a label. I was his first kiss, and he was obsessed with kissing me. He would kiss me anywhere and everywhere, and I’m surprised that people still wanted to hang out with us!

This awkward stage transformed into our actual relationship one night outside of The Cheesecake Factory.

It was September 27th, 2014, and Chris and I went to the mall with a group of friends.We were walking around Forever 21, Aeropostale, and other stores that 18-year-olds enjoy. Suddenly, some of our friends decided that they were hungry for cheesecake and wanted to go into the cheesecake factory to get cheesecake to go. At this point, Chris proceeded to have a pounding headache and sat on a bench outside of The Cheesecake Factory.

I felt bad for the guy that I was sort of kind of seeing and I went into the eatery and got him water and a snack in hopes of curing his headache. I sat next to him on the bench outside of the restaurant and gave him his medicine in food form.

We were now sitting alone, and his head must have felt better because he sheepishly said to me, “I think I’m ready.” He did not ask me, “will you go out with me?”

He did not ask me, “will you be my girlfriend?” He uttered four words: “I think I’m ready.”

Obviously, I said, “I think I’m ready too” because I had been waiting for us to blossom into butterflies from our previous caterpillar status.

I do believe in love at first sight from Facebook to college orientation to The Cheesecake Factory to over three years later. I still stand beside my partner in crime. No, there were no bells and whistles and singing Disney princesses, but my love at first sight story is unique. I wouldn’t trade it for anything!