In light of this thread, I wanted to hear some (hopefully) more positive experiences with long distance relationships.
There is a possibility that I’ll be moving to go to school next year. My boyfriend, who I’ve been with for 5 years and living with for a year, will not be able to follow me for the first year, and possibly not for subsequent years either. I’m hoping we would be able to visit each other once per month or so, and I would return home for the summers (3-4 months).
Did this sort of thing work out well for anyone? How many years did you maintain this? Any advice for making things go more smoothly?
My boyfriend and I were apart for about the first 3 and a half years of our relationship. We were always about 2-3 hours apart. He visited me two to three times a month, always on the weekends. It was very hard to be without him while I was starting college, but we kept calling each other (my parents got me an infinite amount of phone cards), iming each other and talking on the webcam (his parents got me a webcam as a going to college present so we could talk and see each other). It was hard, but we tried to make the best of it by talking a lot and trying to convey all the love and support we could.
(But then again, we knew that he was going to transfer to my school and that we’d live together, so we knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel. Your story is pretty different =/ )
I’d suggest trying to keep in contact as much as possible - but not to the point where you’re stunting your experience at your new school. Just send lots of e-mail and make appointments to really talk to each other. And write letters! Letters always make you feel loved =)
I’m actually in your shoes right now. My current gf and I had been talking since December of '03 (my spring semester of my freshman year of college) and are currently still together. She only lives 2 hours from me, and comes to visit about once a month, and I go down the rest of the time, when I can. At first, I really didn’t want any sort of commitment (never having had a real gf before) and wanted to sort of test the waters here at school and live the single life here at college for a while.
But, damn was she persistent.
When I came home for the summer, we spent EVERY SINGLE DAY together, except for two weeks when I went on vacation to Florida with my familly (I’m going again this year, and this time she’s coming with me). I’d like to say that it’s really not all that hard, but the fact is that it takes alot of work, time, and commitment. I can honestly and truly say that I love this girl and would do anything to be with her, but I also have my priorities and she has her’s and that’s understandable. The key is communication and a ridiculous amount of optimism; fights are so much harder to deal with when you can’t see the other person and it takes an extraordinary display of patience. All in all, if you love your bf and are willing to try and make it work, and go in with a good outlook on things, you should be fine (not saying it won’t be hard, but probably won’t be as bad as you think).
Oh, and another thing I forgot to mention…I don’t know how argumentative you and your bf are, but inevitably there will be a fight. One simple piece of advice, and if there is one thing that you take from this post let it be this:
NEVER, EVER, EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EVER, EVER GO TO BED MAD AT YOUR BF OR LET HIM DO THE SAME TO YOU.
If you’re like me, you won’t get a wink of sleep. But hopefully, you’re not like me and you won’t be too stubborn to call back and talk things out (or maybe you’ll just avoid conflict all together).
I truly hope that all goes well for both of you all.
Thanks, flood. Ironically enough, when we do fight - even now - it’s problematic because I like to talk things out while he likes to be alone while he calms down. I guess we’ll have to work out some way of dealing with it, I can definitely see it being worse long-distance.
But yes, this is a very very long-term relationship, and breaking up is not an option. Even if he doesn’t move, I expect we’ll get married within the next few years.
I guess my advice for someone going off to college is to not even waste each others time with a long distance relationship. Have fun over the summer and then call it quits. You see, basically you are (or should be) starting new lives in college. New friends, new experiences, new everything. Look, go rent Road Trip or Overnight Delivery and you’ll get the idea. Eventually you will be caught up in your new lives and that “special someone” 4 hours away is going to turn into an unwanted nuisance that you have to entertain for the entire weekend.
While I respect your right to have an opinion, msmith537, I don’t think it applies in this case. I’m not going ‘off to college’, I’ll be doing graduate work. We’re not high schoolers, I’m 22, he’s 26 and has been out of school and in the workforce for many years. We’ve been together 5 years and plan on marrying, so no, in our case, breaking up is not an option.
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I guess my advice for someone going off to college is to not even waste each others time with a long distance relationship. Have fun over the summer and then call it quits. You see, basically you are (or should be) starting new lives in college. New friends, new experiences, new everything. Look, go rent Road Trip or Overnight Delivery and you’ll get the idea. Eventually you will be caught up in your new lives and that “special someone” 4 hours away is going to turn into an unwanted nuisance that you have to entertain for the entire weekend.
[QUOTE]
I have to say that this is the way that I thought going into college. Things change, though and I can honestly say that I don’t feel as if I’m wasting my time in my relationship (to say that is, in fact, insulting to me and proabably would be to my gf too). The fact is, I can still meet people have have (reasonably) new experiences in college; hell, I’m living the same life as friends without gf’s. The other fact is, that I’d rather spend time with my gf than anyone else in the world (friends over here included). I have so much fun just being with her, that I couldn’t think of not being with her. Sure, we fight and stuff, but what couple (married or otherwise) doesn’t? The other other fact is that stuff that you see in Road Trip doesn’t usually happen IRL (well at least not to me, and even if I had missed out on stuff like that, I wouldn’t feel like I missed out on much). Suffice to say that my relationship is not a waste of time, and to generalize that all long distance relationships are, is not only wrong but incredibly ignorant.
Then you know your course and what you have to do to stick to it. It will be very hard to endure the distance, but if you’re that determined to be with him then things will work out in the end. As long as the benefits outweigh the costs, keep at it. Just make sure that you’re enjoying the relationship instead of clinging to it.
Sorry, my assumption was you were going to college, not graduate school. Since you have been dating a long time and have a clear plan to get back together, it is possible that it might work out. The last thing you want is an open-ended LD relationship.
Here’s the danger though with any long distance relationship. It becomes a very easy relationship to maintain. All it takes is a phone call every couple of night and a road trip once a month and that’s it. You really don’t have to deal with each other on a regular basis. So basically, you build up the other person in your mind because you miss them or only remember the good stuff. The Magical SO shows up and it’s either magical because you been building up this weekend for weeks and you are both on your best behavior or it’s a little bit of a let down because it’s not as great as you expected.
Well the over the top stuff doesn’t happen, but there was certainly plenty of wild times at my college (also check out Bring it On and Rules of Attraction for other LDR scenarios). But forget that crap, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about eventually you or her will (or should) meet someone who you connect with AND isn’t geographically undesirable. So you will now be in the frustrating situation of having someone you are really into, is close by but unavailable because of this magical SO five hours away.
I had a LD relationship several years ago. We were together for about 9 months before he moved and we stayed together for about 6 months after that. The first month was hard because we were used to seeing each other all the time and it was hard to get used to being apart. We talked on the phone a lot and we got together a couple times a month. After 3-4 months of that the phone calls became a little less frequent and we got together once a month. I found that I was meeting new people and enjoying different things and wasn’t missing him as much and he was doing the same so we ended things on good terms… before one of us did something to hurt the other person.
It can work… if you want it to! If you find that after the first year or so you aren’t as excited to see him or talk to him and if things are strained and/or tense when you are together then maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the situation and decide if you need to live closer together or if you need to end it.
And don’t forget about Road Trips Rules of Cheating:
"When you’re in a committed relationship and have sex with another person, it’s not cheating if…
You’re in different area codes.
You’re with two people at the same time, because they cancel each other out.
If you’re too drunk to remember it, it never really took place… "
The modern age does make LD relationships a lot easier, with chat (msn - works well with webcams), skype (www.skype.com - for free voice over internet), webcams (half decent cable or ADSL and something like a Logitech Pro 4000 will do very, very well) … oh, and forums … really bridges the LD gap a lot more efficiently than letters by horse and carriage used to.
I did the long-distance thing with the superhero for a year and a half before I moved here to Denver. We’ve now been together over 3.5 years.
My recommendations echo those of others in this thread. Make a schedule to talk (either every night for a short time, or a few times a week for longer), make sure you have IM/email capabilities, and above all, make sure you always know when the next time you see each other will be. Always plan that in advance so you have it to look forward to.
My other recommendation is to have a light at the end of the tunnel - KNOW that the long-distance scenario will be over at a certain point. Open-ended LDRs are the kiss of death. Even if that point is two years in the future, talk it over before you are apart and make sure you are both OK with that and working toward the point when you will be geographically located in the same place again.
Long distance relationships are both more and less work than regular relationships (they’re definitely more expensive, particularly cross-country ones!), but since you have had the experience of living together, you won’t have the sort of fair-weather view of the relationship when you are able to visit each other, because you know each other already, hairy warts and all. One of the difficult things I have known about other people’s LDRs is that when they finally do get to live in the same place, they move in together right away and don’t have any interim “living apart but in the same town/city” time and space, and the relationships are shocked into everyday warts rather than ideal visiting time. This isn’t really applicable in your case, but keep in mind that you are in a relationship with that WHOLE person, not just the good/ideal parts of that person.
I wish you the best of luck and don’t envy your situation. After my BF and I finally moved in together, we made the decision that we wouldn’t be separated again. If I go somewhere for grad school, he wants to go with me.
My husband and I had to do the long distance thing for a while before we got married. It was very frustrating but there were more factors involved than just the distance. He had just joined the Navy and had virtually no freedoms. For about 3 months he didn’t have a car and he lived in the BEQs where I couldn’t stay. I lived 350 miles away and was finishing college and working.
His cell phone never got any reception on base so unless he was out at the mall or something we couldn’t talk. Instead we had to communicate by email and IMs.
The moment he got his car back he was visiting every chance he could. Sometimes that involved working a 12 hour watch then getting straight into his car for a six hour drive. He would walk into my apartment and fall onto my bed. I’d have to either work or go to school so we barely saw each other then.
We did this for about a year. Then I graduated, he got stationed 1000 miles away, and I went with him. Now we’ve been married for about 10 months. He’s on a sub so there are times when I don’t see him for a couple of weeks and the only communication is unreliable screened email. I just look at it this way, I’d rather be doing this then not having him in my life at all.
Thanks. One of the issues is that I’ll most likely be moving to the US, where not only desire but availability of visas will limit his moving to be with me. I think I’m going to keep paying my half of rent on this apartment, so I’ll be able to live here for the 3 months in the summer. I hope that ends of up helping, since we can be a normal relationship for at least 1/4 of the year.
TaxiDriver and I have been doing the LD thing for heading on 3 years now. We have a slightly different experience though. We were friends in college and got together after we both graduated and were living in different areas. We do not have a definite end date in mind either. It’s all about what works for you and not what others say is the “right” way to do it. (Sorry, I get defensive about the idea that we’re doing it the “wrong” way or that we’re less likely to stay together because we didn’t follow the prescribed way of doing this.)
Some advice: do what it takes to be there for each other when the other person needs you. I’ve had crises; he’s had crises. We’ve both been as supportive as we can over the phone. Sometimes it means missing something you wanted to go to or missing that favorite tv show. (This is true for non-LD relationships too, but it gets lost more easily when you’re not physically together.) It’s easy to say, “I’m busy right now, can you call back later?” and you have to learn to listen for the clues as to when this is a crisis and he really needs you now, not later. In person it’s a lot easier to see the visual, body-language or facial-expression type clues to tell when the other person is really upset. It’s a lot harder on the phone, but it’s just as important. (Can you tell there’s been a recent crisis so it’s on my mind?)
Also, it’s ok if you don’t have something to talk about every day. We do talk almost every day but sometimes it’s only for a few minutes with a conversation that goes something like this:
“How was your day?”
“Fine. Yours?”
“Fine.”
<long pause>
“So you want to go?”
And that’s it. It’s ok. It took us a while to realize that you don’t *have *to have an hour-long conversation every night.
There are a few good points to LDs too. You look forward to the visits and tend to put everything else aside and really have fun together. I really enjoy my visits with TaxiDriver and think we have more fun in our weekends than we would if we were together on a daily basis. You have more independence and time to do your own thing. You don’t have to worry about getting home to have dinner together or feel bad when you have a late class or need to spend hours in the library.
That definitely makes things more difficult! I can imagine that it is nigh on impossible to get a work visa for the US from Canada unless you are a nurse or something where there’s an extreme shortage of labor.
You’ll definitely end up looking forward to summers and other visits!
Hey, that’s great! I’m really glad it works for you. If it works for you, that’s fantastic. My point was just that in the LDRs I have seen/known about, it seems to be really difficult to keep the relationship going if there’s no end in sight to the long distance aspect of it. I also think you had a good point about knowing when the other person really needs communication, and it being OK to not have much to say when you talk.
LaurAnge, I definitely think that long distance relationships can work and be healthy and satisfying. It takes hard work and really good communication skills (but hey, what relationship doesn’t?). If you and your boyfriend are really committed to making the relationship work, then you can make it work. You just need to figure out what works well for the two of you and your relationship - there are all kinds of issues that come up in a long-distance relationship that you might not think about when you see the person every day. Trust and clear communication are the most important things, IMHO.
I’ve never been in a LDR, but I have one comment. I am astounded at the culturals differences I see between us Americans worrying about being a few hours from our significant others, and the one Chinese woman and Indian consultants I am working with right now. The Chinese woman’s husband was in the US for grad work for more than a year before he came to China, they married, then they both moved back to the states for more grad school. The Indian consultants come to the US for months on end without their wives, or they take a brief trip back home to get married, then come back to the US and leave their new wife at home. In both cases something like 10000 miles separated the love birds. India is rather different case, however, due to the arranged marriage aspect, but there still is common ground for comparison.
As to the OP, give it a try, work hard, and if it lasts, there you go. Kiki’s post is the situation I would worry most about, but the length of your relationship argues against it.
To add to that, and show you it can be done, we’ve been together about ten years (married about five). We’ve together for a total of three years. We’ve now officially swapped coasts, as she used to be a west coaster with me on the east coast, and now it’s vice versa.
It works. Get an unlimited cell phone plan. Don’t be jealous and don’t give a reason for the other person to be jealous.
