This Is Why Short-Lived Relationships Matter As Much In Your 20s As Long-Term Ones

The most exciting, ever-changing time in a person’s life undoubtedly occurs in their 20s.

The multitude of transitions a person encounters in this period of time sets the standard of living for the rest of their adult life.

We find that we’re faced with making large-scale decisions anywhere between college, our first careers, moving out, and in many ways; moving on.

Moving on from something, some place, and someone.

So when the time comes that we are moving on from something, and patterns in our lives begin to change, why is it that we find some patterns staying the same?

As I moved on from a relationship from the summer going into my senior year in college with one man, I found myself in what seemed to be the exact same relationship going into my final semester of college with a different man.

I had fallen into the exact same pattern of meeting an older guy with all of the assets I could ask for.

He was good-looking, held a good career, had good apartment in the city, took me on extravagant dates, and used his words and actions to sweep me off my feet.

Although nothing ever felt wrong with either man, when I found myself facing the same situation again, just four months down the road, I asked myself though, was anything ever right?

While I wished for both of these men to keep sending chills down my spine, I wondered if it was even what I really wanted.

In the moment it felt so good, but when I got up and left to go home, I simply just went on living my life, as if none of it ever happened.

So I thought, were these high-passioned, exciting short-lived relationships meant to only happen for a small period of unused time?

Or were these men with so much potential supposed to be held onto in the long run?

When I began to move on from the first guy, I found myself in no time, starting to move on from the second.

What was perfect in the moment wasn’t truly meant to be, and as I had become so accustomed to moving on from things, places, and people in my 20’s, I found that moving on from men was just another footstep on my path.

As we continue walking along our path, thinking what our past love even meant for us, we may find that these fleeting flames leave little purpose in our lives.

But it isn’t so true to write off short-lives relationships as completely meaningless.

The fiery flame that causes us to fall fast shows us a sort of passion that only exists in small spans of time. The type of passion that more often than not we find in the beginning of all relationships, is the type of passion we find throughout the entirety of those short-lived.

While we watch these relationships start and end at full speed, we may never truly take the time to think about what they meant for us.

But sometimes it isn’t about how many minutes we put on the clock as a couple, but rather how the minutes were spent.

The way we felt when it began, the way we felt when we were in it, and the way we felt when it was all over, all play a role into the development of our relationships for the future.

The way we loved, and the way we were loved are not solely based on how long it was for, but how deep the passion was.

We can learn from these brief loves, that sometimes what feels so right in a moments time, isn’t always right for our lives in the fullest.

That even congruent compatibility with a person, laying side by side in bed, sharing secrets, sharing a moment, won’t be the only thing to define whether or not it’s destined for eternity.

Because we will come to know many men who we will build connections with, and as we get over one man, and we find another, we will continue to wonder what we were even thinking in the first place.

And all in all, these fast moving connections help develop who we are over time, and lead us to who we are supposed to be, and even more so, who we are supposed to be with.

So as we fall in and out of short-lived relationships, we must not always think that something we did or something we said failed us, because sometimes it’s much simpler than that.

Sometimes, it’s just the way of the world telling us to keep going forward, because the best is truly yet to come.