Why We're All So Obsessed With That Prince Harry Lip Bite

Maybe you blinked at the wrong moment. Maybe you got up to get a snack. Or maybe you, like me, slept through the entire Royal Wedding. But even if you missed it at first, it's almost impossible to be unaware of the tiny moment that might just change men's wedding-day strategies forever. I'm not talking about the royal vows, though I guess those were kinda important, too. I'm talking about that Prince Harry lip bite, forever to be known as the bite heard (seen?) 'round the world.

Let me break it down, just in case you missed it: Prince Harry was standing at the end of the aisle, as many men who are about to get married do, when his lovely wife-to-be, Meghan Markel, walked up beside him. He looked at her, said "You look amazing," and then took his lower lip into his teeth and lightly bit down. It all happened so fast, but it was enough to make lots of people on Twitter swoon and demand the same attention from their future spouses.

But what was the real meaning behind that lip bite? Was it all the pent-up feelings of love and lust just trying to burst out? Or was his lip just itchy and a tiny bite was the easiest way to scratch it? Luckily for all the romantics out there, body language experts say it's the former.

"Biting the lip means holding back verbally," says body language expert Dr. Lillian Glass. Rather than bite his lip, Prince Harry was probably overwhelmed with love for Markle and wanted to shout about it, she says. But, Prince Harry is a royal, after all, and royals are known for their stiff upper lips, (no matter how much they might have partied in their youth). "The Royals are trained not to show emotion publicly, and he was full of emotion that day," Dr. Glass says. "So it was so hard for him to contain himself."

Yet, Prince Harry did show emotion, at least a little bit, when he told Markel that she looked amazing. But even that has a deeper meaning, says Patti Wood, a body language expert in Georgia. "I love that it wasn't the standard 'You look beautiful," she says. "The fact that he chose a more informal word was also an indication of how sincere and reliable it was." The bite, saying "You look amazing," and several other moments of vulnerability that both Prince Harry and Meghan Markle showed throughout the ceremony point to their relationship as one that's genuine, loving, and likely going to last, Wood says.

So, maybe there's something to our obsession with the Prince Harry lip bite as a marker of how much someone really cares about you. Twitter, at least, seems to think so and they're holding their future S.O.s accountable.