Long-distance relationships have existed around me since my early teens. I had friends start and end relationships at distance and I’ve heard good and bad stories alike revolving around such relationships. In every relationship I had, the topic would arise once I revealed that my plan has always been to leave my mother country and study someplace else – and then it would lose importance when those relationships ended. As social media took off and the internet offered us so many new, vastly improved ways to communicate, long-distance relationships have turned into something more common and, to some degree, more socially acceptable.
When I left for university, I really didn’t expect to fall in love. And when my relationship with my partner started, I didn’t really think much about the fact that I and he come from two completely separate worlds, geographically and culturally. It was only towards the Christmas break that I realised that because of me coming from a different country, we would have to keep the relationship going at distance for the duration of our breaks from university. We got used to spending weeks away from each other, but it was during the summer break after my first year of university that I understood what having a long-distance relationship meant. This past summer, I’ve spent a little over three months away from my boyfriend, whom I’m finally seeing again this week. And I have a few thoughts about what being in a long-distance relationship means.
It’s safe to start by saying that being in a long-distance relationship sucks. Honestly, it’s painful and tiring. It’s frustrating to be away from the one you love, and a reason why this state of my relationship took such a toll on me was that, prior to going long-distance, I and my boyfriend were basically living together. Either in our first student accommodation or in the house we got the following year, we were used to doing everything together and it was just the way our relationship worked from the start. For somebody who hasn’t been emotionally invested in any of my previous relationships, being so close to someone through such a life-changing, poignant time of my life and then having to be separated from them for a lengthy period of time felt like absolute hell to me. For the entirety of my breaks spent home, I was feeling miserable and just wishing I’d be back already.
(photo credit: Marina Hinic)
At the same time, long-distance relationships do teach you a lot. They can be a great test for trust and faith between two lovers and they emphasize how important communication is for a relationship to work. Maintaining a romantic relationship at distance provides you with a unique perspective on how much two lovers invest in the bond they have: you get to see who’s pulling the weight more, and even whether the pain and the struggle are worth it. I imagine it might sound bad to somebody who’s never been in this position; as far as my personal experience is concerned, though, going long-distance in a relationship is enough of a challenge to confirm if the person you love is worth the effort.
Another reason why the long-distance part of my relationship is so important was because I and my boyfriend started talking approximately a month before ever seeing each other in real life. Although we did start dating once we both got to university, it was during that initial month that most of the talking and flirting was done online, which had its own impact on how the relationship evolved. It was something I’ve never done before – getting to know someone as a person long before meeting them IRL – but it was beautiful, and pure, and valid. I enjoyed the process and I was happy to slowly fall for a person for who they truly are, rather than for the mask they could’ve put on had I met them in a real-life situation. It was also a big reason why we felt so comfortable with each other so quickly.
For somebody like me who struggles with anxiety, going long-distance gave me a hefty number of additional things to stress over. They’re not even related to love and trust most of the time. I could instead worry that my boyfriend is sick and I’m not there to do the things that he might not feel well enough to do, or that after three months of being away from each other, I am coming back and for some reason, our relationship is no longer the same. It’s a lot of unnecessary and unfounded stress for which I am responsible, but that wouldn’t exist had I not been in a completely different country.
Of course, there’s also the physical intimacy that comes with my idea of a romantic relationship. Even beyond the sexual angle, it’s hard to not be physically close to your partner. Many of the things that would actually flow from romantic interaction – such as a hold of hands or a kiss – have to be replaced with other strictly cognitive ways of showing love and affection, and there’s only so much emotion that these can convey. This takes me back again to why communication is crucial in a long-distance relationship: lose it and the nucleus of your relationship is just gone. As if to make matters even more delicate, verbal communication in itself has its ups and downs.
Sometimes, you really don’t have the energy to be all upbeat and chatty, especially after a long shift at work or a string of stressful events spicing up your day. Usually when that happens, you give yourself a break and don’t put so much pressure on yourself to gain your energy back in record time, but I found that with long-distance relationships, you do. It’s after said long and tedious day that you go home and chat to your partner about how it’s been for you that day, and you might feel like toning down on the negativity and faking a bit of happiness and energy for the conversation to not turn completely depressing. As somebody who often dwells on negativity rather than anything else, there’s a lot of censorship I felt that I had the duty to perform on the account of my daily events just because, again, I didn’t want my partner to be upset about not being to help me with more than a few encouraging words. Which always do wonders but when you are so far away from each other, you might feel like they don’t.
By this point it might sound as though I completely hate the concept of long-distance relationships and I’m desperately looking forward to getting out of this phase of my relationship but honestly, it’s nothing like that. I don’t regret any of my choices in this regard and had I the opportunity to go back in time, I would do it all over again. It really was a test for my relationship and a test for myself, and helped me self-reflect and understand my emotions and how I decide the way to act on them better. It was a multifaceted experience that helped me grow up, develop my empathy and widen my perspectivity. It was hard, but eventually rewarding – and one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
I wrote this post specifically to share my experiences around long-distance relationships and how complex they are. I am aware, though, that what I’ve lived is just the tip of the iceberg and there are folks out there who have been or currently are involved in longer relationships, bound at greater distances and therefore creating a lot more hardships than what I’ve dealt with. I have all the respect and support in the world for these people, and in no way have I intended to trivialise or disrespect their experience of long-distance relationships. From this perspective, I believe everybody has their own meaningful story to tell and all I wanted to do was to tell mine.
I haven’t done this for long enough to consider myself an expert in managing long-distance relationships, but I do have a few tips in mind that could help you, potentially as much as they helped me, if you already are or you are bound to get in a long-distance relationship.
First of all, communication. Communication is key. It’s really up to you guys to choose the best means of communication for you: quality rather than quantity. You might not be fans of texting or you might not have all the time in the world to Skype or chat on the phone. It is ideal that you talk as often as possible, though, to feel as though you are there rather than here, away from your partner. For example, I use my phone a lot but my partner doesn’t, so it makes sense that he checks on me whenever he does use his phone and we FaceTime at the very end of the day or at another mutually convenient time. You don’t necessarily need to always find new topics for conversation. I for one enjoy telling my boyfriend the silliest and most insignificant parts of my day, too. Don’t feel the pressure to make every conversation unforgettable; instead, just talk.
If time allows, find something that you guys can do together. It could be playing a game or watching a movie together over Skype or take up a hobby that you can both be involved in despite the distance. I and my boyfriend had a tradition of playing Hearthstone together every Wednesday, and that went on for like a year. And for a while this summer, I practised my mother language with him and we also did Chinese together.
Keep a countdown of the days until you see each other again. My boyfriend wasn’t a particular fan of this one (because it made him think of how long we had until we saw each other again) but it helped me deal with the distance a lot better. Getting closer to the date of my return to the United Kingdom with every day that went by was physical proof of how nothing is permanent, and each day gets you closer to your goal. I was also more patient about the great amount of time lying ahead and I felt more in control of the long-distance situation.
Finally, keep yourself busy. You do have a life outside of your relationship, so dwelling on the negative emotions resulting from being away from your partner will only prevent you from enjoying the rest of your life. Make sure you spend time with your family or friends, work or study or practice your hobbies or travel, really, anything you’d like. Not only doing things that you love or are important to you will make you feel better, but they will also distract you and time will seemingly move faster.
Have you ever been in a long-distance relationship? If so, what did the experience mean for you and what helped you cope with it? I would love to hear from you in the comments section down below!
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Photo source:
Silhouette of Airplane in Golden Hour - taken by Marina Hinic for Pexels (link on picture).