How you know when you’re in love, according to this university teacher

It can be one of the hardest things to pinpoint.

But when a university teacher was asked by one of his students how you know when you're in love, he shared a story about a seemingly normal moment that ended up changing his life. Dan West, an assistant professor at Ohio University, teaches the lecture portion of the Introduction to Human Communication class - which recently delved into the topic of love and relationships. According to Buzzfeed, he invited students to ask him questions anonymously using notecards, which is when he read out a seemingly pretty complex question:

"How do you know when you're in love?"

And while everyone has their own moment, or own way, that they felt they knew when they're in love, West's answer really struck a chord with his students. He simply said:

“It just hits you, you can’t expect it and you can’t plan for it."

The 51-year-old professor then shared his own story about how he realised he wanted to marry his then-girlfriend, Vicki, in 1993. He recalled:

“We had just come from a movie and stopped by a grocery store so I could buy some food for the next day. "We were looking at ice cream and as I watched her choosing I realized that I was going to be buying groceries with her for the rest of my life."

He ended up proposing to her, and the pair married a few months later. One of the students in his class, Victoria Helmke, shared his story online where it quickly went viral, getting more than 75,000 retweets. https://twitter.com/torihelmke/status/922952513908805639 She told the publication she decided to share it online "because it was something that I knew would make people happy". She added:

"Nowadays, so many marriages are failing simply because people are not being as appreciated 10 years down the road as they were before they had even begun dating. "Hearing things like this gives people a little bit of hope."

And it definitely warmed hearts across the internet. https://twitter.com/Mediterranean_Z/status/923602706580803587 https://twitter.com/SelinaaNguyenn/status/923541681814802432 https://twitter.com/Mehaira_/status/923518003328798720 https://twitter.com/MaryhMooney/status/923537558092566528 https://twitter.com/TiffanyAngell03/status/923613139517747200?