We were together one year before he moved to San Francisco. We were apart 3.5 years. I moved out there after college and we lived together for about 2 years then we got married. We’ve been married for over 5 years now. All this before the age of Instant Message and e-mails. While apart we could only afford two calls a week and 1, maybe 2 visits a year.
So it can work out if you want it too. The catch is that you both have to want it to work.
In the middle of the year 2000, I fell in love with a wonderful Australian guy. I saw him twice, once for 2 weeks in 2001, as we travelled around Canada and the northeast US, and again for five weeks in 2002, as I visited his home in Canberra.
Given that I wasn’t independently wealthy, and he had a fair bit of money saved up from working whilst going to school, but not too much, it didn’t look good for our relationship. But I managed to get accepted to a really great course in Canberra (I’d always wanted to go back to school anyway), land a study visa, and through moving back in with my (surprisingly supportive) parents and working two jobs I saved up enough money to pay for the tuition and the move. He saved up enough money to put a sizeable down-payment on a house, and 2.5 years after we fell in love, I moved to Canberra to live with him. Now, 4.5 years after it began, we’re applying for my permanent residency.
It was hard - incredibly hard - to be away from him for so long, and for years we didn’t really have a plan. But I wanted it so badly, I found ways to turn an unfavourable, hopeless situation into a new start and a much better life. The eventual reward of snuggling in his arms was a great motivator, and if I could do it all over, I’d choose the same course of action (amended slightly to make getting this permanent residency visa a little easier!).
How’d we do it?
We used programs like iParty or VoxPhone Gold to talk over our internet connections instead of over the telephone, which made saving money even easier. We could talk as long as we wanted without worrying about how much it was costing us. [Microsoft NetConference also worked, but dodgily, and sometimes it sounded like there were aliens on the line with us, things got garbled so badly!]
Whenever we had doubts about our abilities to continue in the arrangement, we voiced them - immediately. Then we’d talk (this was usually through e-mail, so we could approach it more intellectually than emotionally - I cry at the drop of a hat) about ways to resolve the problem. We had an understanding that, if at any time, we felt it was too hopeless, we could give up - but since neither of us wanted to do that, this “understanding” compelled us to find ways to make it less hopeless.
We were downright cold in deciding how to finally enact our plan - I moved here because it was economically and diplomatically more accessible, and I had fewer ties to my community. We drew up lists of pros and cons and worked it out as dispassionately as other couples might decide on a new dishwasher. Making our choices based on these rational things made it easier to see that the plan would eventually work, and went a long way towards alleviating the loneliness and hopelessness we often felt.
I think if it’s a solid relationship from the beginning, and you work out ahead of time how to avoid the pitfalls that will result from insecurity, unexpected set-backs, and the need for affection, then you’ll do just fine. I mean, I’m not the most mature person in the world, especially when it comes to relationships, and I muddled through it OK! 
I appologize if my thread gave you the wrong idea about our relationship. We have had a great relationship for the last 3.5 years. A year and a half of that has been long-distance. It’s been a rough week, but it is the first one in years. I think it’s settled now and we’ll be fine.
That trick to a LD relationship is to keep the lines of communication open. Lots of people have said this, but I think it’s the most important factor to keeping any relationship alive. We talk every night. We don’t go to bed mad. We have seperate lives, but we share them. If there’s nothing to share (we had boring days) then you just say “Hi! I love you, but I had a boring day and there’s nothing to tell. You? No? Ok, love you, bye.” This can also happen if SO calls in the middle of The Family Guy or CSI. Don’t make it a burden. Enjoy it. I enjoy my relationship for the vast majority of the time.
-Mike
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a long distance relationship but this is so far from my experience, it’s untrue. My husband and I were long distance for 15 months and we talked about 6 times a day, texted each other, were on the internet every night chatting through AOL or Yahoo and talked on the phone every single night. We saw each other once a month, pretty much, also. It cost a fortune and took a lot of effort but it was more than worth it. I really can’t understand that anyone who’s ever been through a long distance relationship can have a view like this, except, of course, if it didn’t work out because it wasn’t something that was a priority.
My husband and I worked on our relationship (and still do of course), we made every effort to communicate with each other, we spent hours talking about anything and everything, we were totally honest with each other and we made sure our relationship was a priority. We are now very happily married and enjoying every day together - we don’t take each other for granted for the reason that we were apart for so long.
I think if anyone really is in love with the other person, and really works hard on their relationship, then any long distance relationship will work. It takes two - and certainly, if a person had an attitude like the one above going into the relationship, I’d say forget it, it’ll fail. Long distance is hard but every relationship needs to have time invested.
To LaurAnge , yes long distance works if you work at it - if you and he both really want it, you’ll find a way to make it work. Good luck!!!
Like some of the other posters, I’m generally skeptical of LDR right out of high school. I agree with the idea that college should be a time of experimentation and meeting new people. Make an agreement to meet with your SO two years or so into college and see how you do then. If it’s meant to be, it will work out.
I’ve only been involved in one long-distance relationship and it worked (at least so far). During my first senior year of college (I took 5 years) I took a semester off to do a co-op (for those of you not in the know, it’s where you work for a company while maintaining your full-time student status, usually for a semester + the summer). My co-op term was for the spring semester and the summer. It was fun in that I dated more in the first 4 months of that than I had in a couple years of college. I met a really cool guy at the beginning of the summer. He was nearly 6 years older than I was and I was reluctant to tell him that I was still in college and that I would be returning there at the end of the summer. A few weeks after we had been dating I admitted that, and we had a period where we just seemed to focus on the now and not think about the upcoming fall.
We decided to try a long-distance relationship. We were 280 or so miles apart and both had cars. My class schedule worked out in such a way that I usually had Friday afternoons off, so I drove up to visit him more often. In a way, it was the perfect thing for me–since he was so far away, I really focused on school and didn’t go out much. In fact, my two highest GPAs of my college career were the fall and spring semesters of that year. We both had cell phones and we talked nearly every night after 9 PM, when our anytime minutes kicked in.
I had hoped to move back up to his area after graduation (not only because he was there, but because that area had a lot of opportunities for my industry). I didn’t get any job offers, but was offered a promotion at the job I held during the school year. I decided to stay there for the summer and save up money. I was able to set my own schedule, so I often had 3 or even 4 day weekends to spend with him. As the ending date of my lease approached, I still didn’t have a job offer and was worrying. I decided to put most of my stuff in storage and move in with him.
Within a month I had a job. I stayed with him another month and a half. By then, our relationship was starting to get a bit strained. I think part of it was going from being 280 miles apart to living together. Another factor was that I never felt like I was in my own place–I felt more like I was a guest in his apartment. So I got my own place (though it’s just 2 blocks from his), which I wanted to do anyway, because I never wanted to be one of those women who goes from living with her parents to living with college roommates to living with a boyfriend or husband.
Things have been much better. This June we will celebrate our 3 year anniversary. When our leases run out at the end of the summer, we plan on moving in together. I think we’ve been very lucky, but I think when we met both of us were in the right place in our lives to want to have a serious relationship