Long distance is hard.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m depressed. I’m frustrated. My boyfriend is 500 miles away. We met online, and it turned into something good pretty much immediately. My plan is to eventually move to his area after finishing my last year of school. I already had dreams of moving to the States before I met him, so it’s not really that insane. We knew from the start that the distance would be a problem, but we decided to try and make it work anyway. I’ve only got a year left in school, after all, and we can visit.

But the visiting is turning out to be more difficult than we expected. Because I have classes all week, I can only get away on long weekends, which are few and far between. He’ll come up here too, of course, when he can find time off work, but it’s looking like we won’t be able to see each other very often. Flights are expensive, but with trains and buses making a 14-hour trip each way, they’re really the only option. Otherwise we spend a day traveling to get one day together.

This is killing me. I won’t be able to see him until mid-October, at best. And then after that, we might have to wait until Christmas. I talk to him almost every night (God bless Skype), but I miss him so much.

People manage this. I know they do. But how?

This is going to be the toughest year ever.

2

We just did. And I married him.

3

Mostly, with IM, text messages, and lots of phone calls. Yes it’s hard, but you end up getting to know each other very well. Hang in there. It’s worth it in the end.

4

Lots of communication! It’s tough, you don’t get that face to face time that so many couples take for granted. If he’s worth it, work it out. It may seem like forever but a year is not at all impossible if you are both willing to work through the tough times.

Communicating with people who do not live nearby is easier than ever. You can get cellphones from the same company so that your calls to each other don’t eat up any minutes. You can chat through emails and IMs. You can even both get webcams so you can “see” each other more frequently. It’s one year - and you both have something important going on. That should help to make time go by faster.

5

Yeah, we have that part down pretty good. About 2 hours a night. We’ve only missed maybe 3 nights since we met.

I’m so glad someone told me about Skype, because talking free is better than talking cheap! I don’t want to think about how huge my phone bill would be.

6

Yep we did it too. Between Australia and New Zealand for 15 months, only seeing each other every 3 months. Damn hard but now we’ve been happily married for 6 months. Got through it with lots of long phone calls, emails and gifts in the mail.
If he’s the one, then hang onto him and do everything you can to stay in touch. As a bonus, you will get to know each other really well during this time.

7

it is hard. just keep in mind that being with him even across a great distance sure as hell beats the alternative.

8

You ain’t kiddin, sista. if6was9 didn’t have a cell when we met, so my bill one month (I kid you not) was $825. :eek: He got one the following month. Being on the same plan helps enormously.

9

I’m happy for you. It will work, if you both want it to. My wife and I were separated by 1200 miles in the beginning, but we’ve been happily married now for over seven years.

Neither of us had a computer then, and I stupidly ran up so much in long distance charges that they cut off my privileges. I mailed them the last payment after I was already living here. We wrote epic-length letters to each other for two years. That’s a good way to get to know someone. You each get to tell the other everything about yourselves.

It seems hard now, and there will be some obstacles to overcome, but as I said, if you both know it’s right and you are willing to make it happen, it will. Good luck!

10

After three years or so, long distance has finally gone from “we’re over 600 miles apart” to “he’s in the shower and I’m at the computer”.

But I still miss him and wish he’d get out of the shower faster. :wink:

11

Golly, back when I was in a long distance relationship, we mailed actual letters.

12

So what’s stopping you from joining him there? You’ve gone 600 miles already, what’s another few feet?

13

:smiley:

14

I think Otto has some very sage advice here. :slight_smile:

As for long distance, just remember, the phone can break if you toss it hard enough. :stuck_out_tongue: (No, I haven’t broken a phone yet, but I sure want to sometimes.)

15

I have a bunch of those, too. But I’m impatient. :smiley:

16

I’ve been in a long distance relationship since I moved to California in June. My boyfriend is 3000 miles away, with a 3 hour time change. It hasn’t been easy, but we’re getting by. Two hours on the phone is about right … not every night, but close to it. We wrote letters, too, and he reads my livejournal and adds his own snippy comments. The time will pass, I swear. Although I have to say that at least I found it harder after I went back and visited him (thank Og for Southwest and cheap airfare). These past weeks since I got home were the toughest. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel … he’s moving here in 9 days.

So it will work, you just need to talk, a lot. That’s where the long distance relationships that I’ve seen fail, failed.

17

I’ve been long distance with my girlfriend for a year next week, longer than that if you count the time we were together-but-not-together. it was always hard, but we were always so strong because we talked all the time… 3 to 4 hours a day on IM, generally, and sometimes an hour on the phone too, plus being on the same messageboard and both having livejournals. I was happier than I’d ever been in any relationship.

I had the good fortune of spending the summer with her, which was amazingly good, but now she’s gone back and it’s pretty much killing me. she spends most of her free time now over at some friends of hers’ place, so she calls me when she gets home and crawls into bed and isn’t particularly talkative… the most I can generally get out of that is about 30-45 minutes, an hour if I’m lucky. no more emails, or IM, or online anything. I’m trying to keep quiet and let her do what she wants to do, but I can’t shake the feeling I’m just going to watch this gradually dissipate… about the only thing that gets me through is thinking that even this is better than being without her.

I guess the take-home lesson from that is, yes, communication is vital. as much as you can get, and visits too, but as long as you’ve got communication you can go a damn long time without seeing each other. another thing that really makes it bearable is having something to look forward to-- the next time you’ll see each other, or when you’ll be living together or close to each other. I know I always felt so hopeless when I had no idea when the next time we saw each other would be.

18

As long as you’re wishing your SO was closer instead of being glad he/she is far away, don’t give up. I’ve been on both sides. One trap you can fall into is trying to put a happy face on everything when the two of you get to talk. Especially if your contact is limited for financial or other reasons, it’s far too easy to get into the mindset of not wanting to spoil what contact you do have. You can’t be afraid of showing all your sides, even your cranky, grumpy one (s).

19

My fiance and I have been doing it for 2 years. (Only another year to go, yay!) It’s hard, but it gets easier the longer you do it. We spend about an hour (maybe a little less) on the phone every couple of days. It works for us.

Gemma’s number one tip - Spend lots of time with your friends.

Good luck.

20

Right. Story time.

In the early 1950s, a young man joined the US Navy and sent to the Bainbridge Naval Training Center in Maryland for basic training. While he was there, he and a friend who had a car used a weekend pass to drive to a nearby city (Lancaster, Pennsylvania) to visit the USO there. He met a young local woman who volunteered to come dance with the soldiers and sailors - and, as she said later, be a kind of unpaid untrained amateur psychologist when they got their Dear John letters and other bad news from home. Now, this young man and this young woman danced together, although he couldn’t dance very well, and they talked, and they really hit it off. He asked for her address so they could write each other, and she gave it to him, half-expecting to never hear from him again.

But he wrote. And she wrote back. And he said he was going to be sent to Norfolk to await his final assignment, and gave her his new address, half-expecting to never hear from her again.

But she kept writing, and he kept writing back. When he got a one-week pass, he took a train to Washington, DC, then hitchhiked to Lancaster to spend it with her. And he said he’d been assigned to a ship that was based at that time in Barcelona. Spain. And this time he said he didn’t really expect her to keep writing, but he sure hoped she would.

They kept writing. For the eighteen months he served in the Mediterranean, they wrote each other several times a week. No Internet, no IMs, no SMS, not even reliable (let alone affordable) long-distance phone lines. Just good old-fashioned snail mail. And just before this young man got shipped home, he bought his penpal sweetheart a mantilla and comb. She wore it as her wedding veil.

I know because I saw the photos. See, that’s my mom and dad :smiley:

It must run in the family. I fell in love on Bitnet Relay, with a guy who was 4000 miles away.

If you really love each other, and you really want it to work, it will work. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s not impossible.