Maybe You Don’t Have to Like Someone That Much to Be in Love | by Mae Reed | Pen With Paper | Sep, 2025

I used to roll my eyes at “love at first sight.” It sounded like movie nonsense—until Jacob smiled at me during morning drills and my entire world tilted.

I was at camp, trying to get my steps right in formation, when I turned around and saw him. Just a smile. That’s it. I didn’t know his name, his personality, or even how to pronounce his actual Yoruba name (Jacob was his English one). But my heart decided right then: him.

My male friend laughed when I told him. “You don’t even know the guy,” he said. And he was right. I knew absolutely nothing about Jacob except that he existed behind me in formation and somehow that was enough to make me blush like a fool whenever he looked my way.

Then I watched this Korean movie scene where a character says, “Honestly, I don’t know how much you have to like someone to be in love.” And it stopped me cold. Because that was exactly what happened with Jacob. I fell before I had any reason to like him.

There was this moment in the kitchen when we were working together, and he was showing me something, holding my hand to guide me through it. Pure magic. I melted on the spot. My girlfriend kept pushing me to actually talk to him before someone else would, but I was too chicken. Too overwhelmed by this feeling I couldn’t explain.

And of course, someone else did snatch him. By the time I worked up the courage to get his number (through his friend, when he was sick), another girl had already stationed herself as “babe.” I’d reach out sometimes after we were posted, but I was always the one initiating. Eventually, I felt too desperate and just… stopped.

But here’s what Jacob taught me: love doesn’t wait for your brain to catch up. It doesn’t need compatibility lists or shared interests or even basic conversation skills. Sometimes your heart just sees someone and goes, “That one. Definitely that one.”

I used to think love had to be built on knowing someone, liking their quirks, understanding their values. But what if it’s simpler and more mysterious than that? What if love is that inexplicable pull that happens before you know if you even like someone’s taste in music?

Jacob remains my only real crush, and I still have a photo I may have stolen from his status. Just writing about him makes my heart skip. Not because we were compatible—I have no idea if we were. But because he showed me that falling for someone can happen in an instant, before logic has anything to say about it.

Maybe that’s what love really is: not the careful calculation of whether someone fits your checklist, but that moment when your heart makes a decision your brain hasn’t even considered yet. The rest—the liking, the compatibility, the getting to know each other—that’s all just hoping your heart chose well.

And sometimes, like with Jacob, you never get to find out. But the falling part? That was real, even if it lasted longer than whatever we might have had.