Why Our 20s Should Be About Finding 'Lightning Bolt' Loves

The beginnings of relationships are always the best. None of us know anything about the future of anything, but in the beginning, for a moment, you can see it all play out in your head.

It’s a high that manifests physically in your body and you can feel it buzzing under your skin. Those feelings are what we use as a scale to rate future feelings and judge past feelings.

Your 20s are just the beginning of your love life. You may have been in love before, but your 20s are a time for deciding what it is you want in a partner and understanding what your life can be depending on the romantic choices you make.

There are two types of loves, and each is equally potent and significant. There are the loves that come racing into your life, the ones you don’t see coming and for which you’re never really prepared.

These are relationships that are intense and consuming and leave you with the type of feeling in your stomach like you’re falling from the sky with no concept of where the ground is.

Then, there are the loves that sneak up on you. You see them coming from a distance, but you’re never fully sure of them until they’re right in front of you. These loves don’t hit as hard, but the roots go deep.

There’s investment there, even if you never intended for there to be. You know that person and he or she knows you with the type of intimacy that only comes with time.

Your 20s are a time for lightning bolt love. The type of love that flashes into your life and burns sh*t down. That changes a little of the composition of you, and you’re not sure if it’s good or it’s bad­, or if you even care either way.

You start to feel dislodged from everything because you didn’t know you could feel anything like that, and it makes you question what you thought you felt before. You need to feel that in your 20s before your life becomes so cemented, that type of dislodgement isn’t logical, rational or responsible.

You need lighting bolt loves to burn you into lava, but as you grow and you step into a more concrete version of yourself, you need slow-building love to cool you back down. You need love that’s stable; something that takes time and is built on a foundation stronger than lust or chemistry.

You need to go through things with that person. You have to have the types of life experiences that change you so you know that person can handle you in any form.

Life is a series of stages, and it’s important to have someone who encourages you take what you need from each stage and use that to become who you’re supposed to be.

I don’t know much about beginnings or ends because they blur over time and all you remember are moments. You remember the very best and the very worst, and you hold on to the general feeling that the person gave you. The final impression that lingers in your mind can negate anything you’ve gone through.

Those lightning bolt loves are what we’ll remember our youth as. We’ll remember the excitement and the passion and the turbulence of it all.

The slow-building relationships are much more underrated. There aren’t as many songs about it, and people tend to forget the quieter moments and the things that don’t cause explosive reactions.

But, in the end, they’re what we’ll remember love to be.