Can I just say something? Every person is seeking the “BOOM” in a relationship — romantically speaking that is. What is the “boom” you ask? The “boom” moment in a romantic relationship is a pivotal and transformative instance when two people share a significant gesture of intimacy or profess their feelings, fundamentally changing their relationship. It’s the culmination of intense build-up and anticipation, leading to an irreversible shift in their connection. This moment, often depicted with cinematic flair, marks the point of no return where nothing will ever be the same again.
For example, in The Notebook, the “boom” was when Allie and Noah reunited after many years apart, and it started pouring rain when they were on the boat in the pond by his house.
Amidst pouring rain, Allie confronts Noah with a mix of hurt and confusion, asking why he never wrote to her, revealing she waited for him for seven years. Noah passionately responds that he wrote her 365 letters, one every day for a year. Stunned by this revelation, Allie is speechless as Noah asserts that their love was never over. He then pulls her into a passionate kiss, symbolizing years of unresolved feelings. This marks the transformative “boom” moment, fundamentally changing their relationship and reigniting their love, knowing their lives will never be the same again.
I didn’t realize I had a boom at the time, but in hindsight, it was there…
And nothing was ever the same.
Let me give you the lead-up to the boom.
After that Sunday when I felt a “shift” in whatever relationship the Storm and I had, we didn’t see each other or even really talk much, maybe a few texts here and there, until we had to see each other that Thursday because he organized a photoshoot for my sister. Can you imagine how awkward I felt? I mean, we had this magical time together not even a week prior, and then barely any word and here we were…brought together by my sister’s work. And I feel like the Storm always made excuses for why I had to come to all of their little work things together. Because truly, I didn’t need to be there, but he told her to have me come to take “behind the scenes” photos and videos.
Anyway, I was so pissed off after everything, that after all the times he chased me and harassed me to hang out with him, suddenly it was like…poof. Nothing. As if we were just two people who had never kissed. Like this was all business. I was so infuriated, that I literally didn’t say a word to him the entire time we were at this shoot. Like, to the point where it was uncomfortable for everyone else. I’m sorry, I don’t have any chill. People will always know how I feel…even without saying a word. And he didn’t like it. After he dropped us off, about a half hour passed and he was suddenly blowing up my phone. The thing with the Storm is that he never actually confronted anything when it came to our feelings toward each other. Like, when he called me after we’d spent the day not talking to each other, he didn’t ask what was wrong with me or why I wasn’t talking to him. He just called and talked, and felt me out to make sure he still had me. Spoiler alert: he did.
He never went too long without finding a way to see each other. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just be forthright and ask me out like a normal person would do, but the Storm wasn’t normal. Instead, he would find reasons for me to be involved with his work. He had to interview a band called Beach Weather at their LA show. He invited me and asked if I could film it for him. What about a tripod? Or anyone else? Why me? It was all confusing because he was so persistent with me in the beginning, trying to pursue me and now it was like he was afraid and had to find excuses for why he wanted me around.
Anyway, I went. We had a ton of time before the show started, so we made our way to a pool bar down the street from the venue. The Storm loved pool — like in a very competitive way. I barely knew how to hold a pool stick. So he taught me. He wrapped his body around mine, and as he positioned my hands and adjusted my stance, I could feel the electricity between us.
He was so pensive…it was just a game. But like everything for him, he became fixated. Addicted. Everything about him was a game or an addiction. Or a twisted mix of both. He was addicted to the game. Playing it. Winning.
It became another night that ended with him kind of on my nerves, the constant whiplash of friends yet more was exhausting — but I continued to hold on with the hope that somehow there would be this magical “boom” where we’d confess our feelings and it would all fall into place.
Even in these moments where he’d drive me nuts, there were pockets of vulnerability where he’d open up to me about things going on in his life, and it made me sympathetic toward him. He’d vent to me about things he was going through with his ex-wife that were lingering on after their divorce, the death of his uncle whom he cared for during the last moments of his life, and other things. And I felt like I could talk to him on a deeper level too. With the chaos that was our friendship, we grew closer. The dichotomy of the whole thing was chaotic.
Friday rolled around, and I was in the car with my sister when the Storm called her about business. Before the call ended, he said to her, “What is your sister doing right now?”
“Hi,” I said, now letting him know I was in the car.
“I’m going to a music festival at the beach, come. You have to be here by 4:30.”
Mind you, I was in the car at traffic hour, in need of a shower, no makeup, and trying to figure out some sort of girl math in which I could get ready and get to Hermosa from Beverly Hills during traffic within 30 minutes.
Somehow I managed. It’s funny when we want something, how we can make it happen if we’re determined enough.
When I got there, we got on his e-bike and rode it down the boardwalk from Hermosa to Redondo where the music festival was. He was on the front, me on the back. The air was crisp and smelled of salt. We rode by houses of all different styles that faced the ocean. I wondered about the lives of the people who lived inside of them. It was one of those days that emphasized why I liked the Storm so much, and felt so comfortable with him, as if all the bad moments had been washed away by a giant wave.
Then we got to the festival. The Storm had to interview some of the bands that were there for the celebrity gossip channel he runs. After he did all of that, we walked around the festival, it was jammed, and right on the beach. We ate and hung out before listening to Seal who was on the stage already performing. We drank peach-flavored Yerba Matte — a beverage that now feels like a holy sacrament dedicated to this specific memory. Isn’t that funny? How a single moment in time can change how you look at a certain drink? Maybe it’s less the moment, and more so the company.
The night ended with Sting. It was so cold, the ocean air hitting our faces as we rode back on his e- bike. The Storm asked me if I wanted to go with him to the airport to pick up his friends who were coming into town, but my dad was also coming into town, so I had to leave. As we were sitting there on his couch before I left, I was petting his dog.
“Can I take him home with me tonight?” I asked.
“Yeah, take him.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
The Storm kissed me goodbye and to Beverly Hills I — and his dog — went. Our dynamic was even weirder. His dog had slept over before he ever had.
The next day, in the evening I had to go to Long Beach to watch my dad accept an award at a conference. So I decided to drop the dog off back to the Storm on my way because he lived in Hermosa. So, after that, he texted me and said, “Thank you for watching after *****.”
Days went by again with little to no communication. But Tuesday…Tuesday brought the boom that changed everything.
It was around 8 PM. I was at home, talking with my friend, Lynn, on the phone. We were catching up about life, and I hadn’t told her yet about the Storm. So I was telling her that I’ve been seeing this guy on and off — the Storm. Literally, as Lynn and I hung up, ironically, the Storm called me. My heart sank into my stomach.
“I’m in your area, I was just having dinner in West Hollywood. What are you girls doing?”
Was he insinuating that he wanted to come over? Why didn’t he just ask?
“We’re just hanging out.”
“Are you girls on dinner dates?” he asked, he laughed, nervously but seriously — he was always insinuating that I was dating other people. It’s something I never understood because I made it clear that, or at least so I thought, I wasn’t seeing anyone else.
The conversation lingered for a moment, both of us hinting to each other that we wanted to see each other. Finally, I said, “Why don’t you stop by on your way home?”
Of course, he did. We sat on my couch, watching Haim music videos, he was obsessed with them. The chemical tension between us was heightened. It was like we were both waiting for the other to make a move. The thing is, we’d obviously kissed before, and whenever we’d hung out, he would kiss me goodbye. But ever since the day we were at his house and he (unsuccessfully) tried to get me in his bathtub, he never really made any serious moves. But as we were sitting there, and the final Haim music video faded out…we leaned into each other, at first he pressed his nose into my head. Suddenly we got lost in whatever the fuck we were. It was like all of these suppressed emotions and lust were finding their way out of our bodies. His lips were on my lips. That night he came over and didn’t leave.
By the end of the night, he was saying things to me like “When I move into my new house in Venice, you’ll move in with me.” We were suddenly wrapped up in chaos. We were suddenly a we. Looking back it was so exciting in the moment, but so not normal.
The next morning, everything felt different. We stood in the kitchen, and he looked at me and said, “What’s going on? It’s like you’ve put a spell on me.”
Later that day, I called my friend Lynn literally screaming from outside the Storm’s studio in Venice, filling her in on the last 24 hours. After his studio, the Storm and I went to look at houses for him in Venice. We walked along the Venice Canal because that’s where his dream house was. We got sushi in Marina Del Rey and went back to his house. Was I dreaming?
We went back to my house that night, I made us a charcuterie plate, and he stayed the night.
Thursday came, and when he left later that day, instead of just directly asking me “Want to come with me?” He hinted at me and said, “I’m going to Hermosa. If you guys are ever in the mood to come…”
After almost 48 hours with each other, while magical, I also needed my space. He ended up leaving. And I immediately had a pit in my stomach. That was the thing about the Storm…he was a storm. Even after the last two days of being together, I wasn’t sure when I’d see him again. The idiot in me texted him, wishing I’d gone with him to Hermosa.
“Let’s hang out tomorrow or this weekend,” he texted back.
And we did. Friday came around and he invited me to come to Hermosa. We walked down the boardwalk to a Mexican restaurant and got food. I promised him that I’d stay at his place that night because it bothered him that I never stayed there. He was constantly asking me to sleep over, even before the boom.
His friends called and they were all going to Barney’s Beanery in West Hollywood.
“Duty calls,” he said. And we headed to WeHo. One of the things I loved most about the Storm was how we looked together. It just made sense. Even the way we dressed. I know that sounds tragically vain, but it was the truth. And I remember how good we looked together that night when we went out. All black and leather jackets.
The Storm was all over me in front of his friends. He looked into my eyes at one point as if we were the only two people sitting at our booth and said, “I remember your eyes.” I wasn’t sure what it meant, but the way he stared at me when he said it, made me melt inside of myself.
He played pool. We had drinks. Ran into friends. A Friday night in Los Angeles on Route 66. This was what people moved to LA for. The American Dream.
Then we went back to his place, and that was our night. The next morning, he had to get ready for an open house, because he was selling his house in Hermosa. It was a family home that he was living in because he was taking care of his sick uncle who lived there until his uncle recently passed away from dementia.
While he was getting ready, I took his dog and walked down the boardwalk to get us coffee and pastries. It was a cold beach day. Overcast. Cozy. Although it was morning, it was already busy.
“Are you staying?” he asked when I got back.
“Do you want to be bothered?”
“I always want to be bothered with you,” he said.
These moments were all extensions of “the boom”.
We spent the day together…at one point he even got his family on FaceTime to meet me.
“My sister is going to be asking me a million questions now,” he said when he hung up. But he still did and said things like, “I?ll just tell them we co-manage your sister.” And after everything, moments like that hurt. Especially because I knew he didn’t mean it. Especially because if I was with someone else and was truly done with whatever this was, I knew he would be devastated.
By 4 o’clock he wrapped up the open house, and he was texting on his phone. He looked up at me for a moment and said, “My mom says you’re really pretty.”
We left Hermosa and he showed me pockets of LA I’d never explored…Playa Del Vista, El Segundo. He was a beach guy. He loved the water. And it wasn’t like he surfed, he just liked water. Maybe that’s why he liked me…I’m an Aquarius, the “water bearer”, and he’s a Libra. We’re obviously very compatible. Have you ever been with someone that you just felt like you could be so yourself with? Like they understood you and you understood them, even in the silence. I was living a dream I didn’t want to ever wake up from, and I feared it was all simply that. Just a dream.
It wasn’t long before his friends called him to hang out, and we were back at my place so I could get ready. As I was upstairs finding an outfit, I could hear him playing the piano downstairs in my den and singing something, something sad. There were so many deep and dark parts to him that I felt like I would never know, so many layers to pull back of all the things he dealt with in his head and internalized, but never spoke…or barely even showed.
We went to his friend’s apartment on Sunset, before we’d all gone to a ’70s-themed bar in Hollywood. Because of his sobriety, the Storm was the designated driver — we all piled in his two-door Bronco and went to Hollywood. I always wondered if it bothered him, being around people who were drinking when he was completely sober. But the Storm loved the idea of taking care of people. When we kissed, did the taste of tequila on my lips scare him? Did he want it? Or was he so numb to it after 10 years of avoiding it, that it didn’t phase him?
The next morning, Sunday. The day of rest. And God knows I needed it after this “boom.”
So, the Storm left, to go do another open house for his place. He texted me when he was back home. That was a thing we did — we’d always text each other when we got home safely. And that was that. That was our boom. But was this the beginning for us? Or the beginning of the end? Could something as intense as a boom, an earthquake, make us? Or break us?
The question is…is this cinematic force of nature, in which some sort of moment of no return exists between two people, too passionate to be promising? Or is it a sign from the universe that two people are meant to be? Because you never hear about people ending up with the person that they have these quick onset, hot and heavy relationships with. It always seems like those crash and burn quickly, and before you know it, they are married to someone else where the connection seems weaker, like wifi at a beach. But for some reason, it’s safe. Maybe because if you feel too much, there’s too much to risk. It’s scary. Safe is easy. It’s promising. The more passionate you are about something, the harder it is to detach from it. You start living in a scarcity mindset, afraid to lose it. And when you’re afraid to lose something, ironically enough it’s easier to lose.
So can a relationship still be successful with or without a boom? Or is there a track record of successful relationships that prove one or the other? Is my concept of a boom, just a writer’s fantasy?
I asked the real experts themselves: married people. I wanted to find people who have been married for a significant amount of time to give me some insight into their thoughts. Now, listen, I don’t know a lot of married people…and I really don’t know a lot of happy married people. But luckily for me, the ones I do know, are in my family. So I asked.
My parents have been married (happily) for 32 years. Who better to ask than them.
I asked them if they ever experienced a cinematic boom in their relationship, or if they think that this big explosion where two people profess their love for each other makes or breaks the seriousness of a relationship.
“I think every day, it’s not the big boom moments that keep you together. It’s all the everyday little things that keep you together — and some big things — but I don’t think it’s boom moments that make relationships work,” my dad said. “I think it’s every day, every day, every day. It’s the little things.”
“Did you guys have a boom moment?” I continued.
“I don’t know if it was a boom moment,” my mom said. “I thought he was a really nice guy. But it was like when I didn’t talk to him for a while, and then I talked to him, I was like, ‘wow, I missed this guy’…it was very natural. And it came together with just like, you know, him, the families—”
My dad added, “And that was the other thing, once I met her family I would say I don’t know if I would call it a boom moment. But it certainly solidified, you know, my feelings…I don’t think it was a boom moment. But it was one more important milestone that I met her family and they were wonderful and they were loving and they reminded me of my own.”
My mom kept going and wanted to add, “Want to know mine? My uncle Nass was in Arizona and your dad sent me a cassette tape of a song he wrote and he [Uncle Nass] said what are you stupid or something? He said ‘You gonna keep going out with the losers and bums you’ve been dating? Are you going to pass up a good guy?’ I’ll never forget it…all the critical people in my life that mattered loved him.”
*This call continued with my dad playing the song he gave to my mom on that cassette tape.*
When I asked my aunt and her husband (coincidentally on their twenty-third wedding anniversary) — I asked them if they experienced a “boom” in their relationship. My aunt said she thinks that there are “booms” when there is unfinished business (hence The Notebook).
My aunt said, “It wasn’t a big combustion” and my uncle added, “I tell people it was when I saw your aunt putting the desk together and had a wrench in her hand then I knew she was the one…I just thought she was about hair and nails.”
So am I simply looking for a burning fire in a cold forest that doesn’t exist? Is the fire in a relationship the thing that burns it down? Is my idea of the boom less cinematic, and more of a destruction…like an earthquake? And maybe a real relationship — no boom included — is just so real, so effortless, that warmth comes from within. Not from the fire.
So how do we know when we meet the one? Is it just a feeling? Is it meeting their family? Watching them build a desk? I think at the end of the day, maybe finding your person — the person who was made for you — isn’t about the big storm. Maybe it’s about all the little raindrops that come together to form a gentle, life-giving rain. It’s in the small, everyday gestures that water the seeds of love, the quiet moments of support that nourish the roots, and the shared laughter that helps everything grow. It’s about how they make you feel understood, accepted, and cherished, like a garden that flourishes in the care of a steady, loving rain.
Maybe you don’t need a big gesture, a big boom, a loud thunder, or lightning because it’s so obvious that it doesn’t need to be seen or heard. It just is. It is just felt.
You’ll have to keep reading next week, to find out what happened next…
Xoxo,
Alexandria
Something to ponder: Have you ever experienced a “boom” in a romantic relationship?