As June is coming to a close, I reflect on how it has been the longest darned June in my memory of many Junes over the years.
My better half and her sister went to Rio de Janeiro to visit family at the beginning of the month, and aren’t returning until next week. This has been the longest time in over three decades of marriage that we have been apart voluntarily (she spent a similar time away when her mom died).
I have felt a surprisingly profound impact–it’s just me and the cat, and even though we communicate multiple times a day, it’s pretty darned lonely on my side.
The other day I was bemoaning the slow passage of time with a couple of friends and I said “It’s not good for a healthy married couple to spend a month apart” On cue, one of my friends casually mentioned that her husband is now working in Connecticut, and they see each other exactly once per month (!). Now I feel bad about whining about my single month of being apart.
But it still sucks. The ability of instant communication is amazing, but it allows me to get worried when nobody answers, jealous when I’m interrupting a social gathering, anxious as the hours drag on toward our next call, and concerned about who else is in the room at the other end. Most of these issues have been easily resolved–for example, she finds a private place and uses earbuds while we chat, and we make a point of setting aside a special time for this.
Anyway, enough about that. 6 days from now she ought to be back.
What about you? Longest time apart? Do you have a long-distance relationship? Never been apart more than 3 days in over 30 years?
What issues cropped up during the moments of being apart?
My wife has been spending 3-5 weeks a year in China for the last 15 years (except during COVID years). She also goes to retreats where she’s incommunicado for 7-10 days at least once a year, usually more. She also used to travel for work fairly frequently sometimes for four days (Sunday night to Thursday night)
When our kid was younger, the scheduling was a bit hectic, unless the kid went with her to China, which she did a few times.
I would do things with the kid my wife didn’t particularly enjoy (Museum of Science, food festivals, robotics fairs, kayaking). If I was by myself or now the kid is older I do things that I enjoy. Take 2-3 hour walks (sometimes 6-7 hours). Bicycle or hike-in-hike-out minimalist camping.
When my wife and daughter were both away 14-15 years ago, my boss would get all excited and load me up with 16 hours of work a day. Fortunately he left (after he had a heart attack) and I bought a bicycle.
When our kids were little, I imagine there would have been other issues like laundry, meals, and getting them to school, but the presence of other family members would certainly have improved things.
They are grown up and out of the house now; hence, me and my cat in solitude.
I took a couple of extra days off around Juneteenth, and went out shooting film on a few occasions. It is a hobby I normally enjoy greatly, but one day I looked around at the complete isolation I was in as I photographed a nearby stream, and felt the 5,000 mile distance so profoundly.
We’ve had a lot of long chunks of time apart, 3 months being the longest, I think. Some were for his work, two were due to my dealing with parent death and illness. I think it’s harder on him than me, I’m a good bit more independent and kind of a loner by nature.
Quite frankly, when he has a business trip or something I positively revel in the solitude. It might be a little different if I didn’t have to interact (in an open, friendly, and helpful manner) with the outside world five days a week at work, but even in the past when I wasn’t working I’ve never minded being alone, and am very rarely lonely.
Our maximum is 6 months apart, during the worst part of the 80s recession. I found work offshore in the North Sea and had to leave 3 months after we got married. This was in ye olden days with no cell phones or email, so we had no contact until I arrived and sent a letter (2 weeks). It was another couple of weeks before I received her reply and knew she’d made the 400 mile trip home safely (by herself). Didn’t see each other again for 6 months. Did this 3 times (6 on, 6 off).
After returning home, friends jokingly asked us how the reunion went. I told them the second thing I did was put down my suitcase.
We lived in different parts of the country when we met so the first year or two was just weekend visits every 2-3 months and a lot of phone calls and emails. Since we’ve been in the same house, the longest time was two weeks a few years ago due to a medical emergency with a parent. It went “fine” in that I was still busy with work and making sure the younger child was fed and transported to/from school, etc. Prior to our meeting, I had done some years as a single parent so I fell back into routine.
While still unpleasant, I have to guess that it’s often easier today with video calls and less concern about long distance costs than back in the day unless there’s other factors at play keeping you from using those.
I’m on the fence about this. The last time she spent so much time away was when her mom died in the late 1990s–that was when mobile phones were mostly analog and never international, except for the wealthy.
This meant we were limited to an occasional $1-2/minute call on whatever friend’s home phone she could get access to
Even with that limited amount of contact, I didn’t notice nearly the same degree of stress on my part. It was before we had kids in the house, so that wasn’t why.
Maybe it’s because between our rare calls I had no choice but to put it out of my mind and get on with life for a few days until we could speak again.
So the easy use of our phones to have video calls any time day or night is a mixed blessing, but I wouldn’t do without it!
My husband has taken longish trips once a year to visit his family in Japan, the longest was about 24 days. He usually does all the cooking, so feeding myself nutritious food was an issue that I had to deal with (tried meal kits, way too much trouble, managed with frozen stuff and eating out). Otherwise, it was okay. I discovered how finicky I can be about object placement and keeping things in proper order when there isn’t another person’s quirks to consider. At last, things were always put away immediately after use, and no dirty dishes in the sink, even briefly. But I am always glad when he gets home.
A week has been the longest - and that hasn’t been for years. My husband goes on a weeklong bowling trip every year - when are kids were young , I stayed behind but I started going along when they were in high school.
In preparation for this great journey, I had my wife teach me how to make a couple of the basics that she makes that I like.
I do a lot of YouTube videos and am adept at handling my gimbal camera, so I documented her teaching me how to make, for example, chicken with peppers, black beans, and rice. I then edited it into a polished video and uploaded it to YouTube as a “unlisted” video for me to refer to.
I have already had that delicious meal four or five times since they left–the most recent time was yesterday.
We were married for less than a month before he took his first two week business trip. That one was hard, as I didn’t know anybody and didn’t have a job.
He was permitted to make one phone call on the company’s dime to call me and tell me that he had arrived.
Four years later he had a six week trip and it just flew by, even though I again was unemployed. We decided to buy a house and I was getting ready to move, so had plenty to do, plus has friends. Still only permitted one phone call, but we might have had email by then.
The last time we were separated, we had email, WhatsApp, FaceBook Messenger, and he had VPN, so he could still get through from China. Theoretically. However, it was more annoying/worrisome when I couldn’t reach him, as I knew I should be able to reach him. For earlier work trips, I knew I couldn’t get a hold of him and I would just have to wait for him to contact me.
My parents did something similar, back in the 60s. They had moved a few months earlier and his new employer shipped him off to an island in Alaska. Mail took longer than 2 weeks, I believe.
My husband used to be in the Navy, so there were 6-month deployments and shorter work-ups prior to that ranging from a couple of days to 3 months. One deployment around the time of the first Gulf War got stretched to something like 8 months. This was also back in the day before email and cell phones, so communication was mostly by letter with the occasional phone call when he was in port somewhere.
Most of the time I didn’t mind it much, though the first year we were married he missed my birthday, his own birthday and our first anniversary, which kind of sucked. But I knew what I was getting into when we got married.
Seven years & 150 miles, on the opposite side of some of the busiest/worst traffic in the country; at best it was about four hrs, but six wasn’t all that uncommon if I left at the ‘wrong’ time of day (which includes about 18 hours of every day)…until today.
Now she’ll only be 50ish miles away & not nearly the hellish traffic
My partner and I first started dating in 2009 and then broke up for a while and have been back together seriously since about 2016. We’re in our mid-40s and don’t live together, he lives about 45 mins away. I like my house and have many obligations here and he likes his house and he has many obligations there, so for now we consider ourselves apartners. Living apart together.
The longest we’ve gone without seeing each other in recent years has been about a month. He works second shift retail (nights and weekends) and I work a 9-5 weekday office job so it’s tricky getting together at all. We were apart for a month in the winter because he lives in the snow belt so a quick midnight jaunt to either house was just too risky in the snow.
We should get married and we should live together but it’s not in the cards for us right now. C’est la vie.
I have often gone off for a conference that took a week. Then in 1979 I was invited to spend a month in Chicago, giving talks, followed by a week in Aspen CO. In 1990-91, I went on sabbatical in Philadelphia and my son in 10th grade (of 11, so he was a junior) and didn’t want to leave. So what I did was that in every 2 week period, I would take a train to Philly on Sunday night, arriving Monday morning, then take a train to NY to stay with my daughter Friday evening, then back to Philly Monday morning and then take the train to Montreal Friday evening, arriving Saturday afternoon. Two days in Montreal, rinse and repeat. It worked out pretty well, although my wife was not too happy. Then in 1997, another sabbatical (only half this time), we visited our son in Seattle in January, then my wife flew home and I spent a month at Stanford, followed by a month in Tsukuba Japan. Then we both flew to Switzerland where we spent a month in Fribourg, then home. So we were apart for 2 months. That’s the longest and I wouldn’t want to repeat that.
Early in our marriage I had a work assignment in the mid-west which I had to be away for three weeks at a time, with a week or two at home in between. I had four such assignments over a few months. It was for work and got more and more difficult near the end. More recently I have started traveling again (for pleasure) and was away for about three weeks in 2019 and in 2022 - was busy adventuring but was also glad to get home. So I would say about 3 weeks for the OP.
We’ve each taken vacations alone that the other wasn’t interested in. Think the longest was maybe 10 days. Went just fine on both ends. We were glad to see each other when it was over.
A while back I relocated 90 miles away for a new job. I got a shithole apartment I crashed in from Mon-Thurs, and drove home Fri after work. We were always very happy to see each other, and the weekends were almost like dating - after 25 years of marriage. Then, come Sun eve/Mon morn, she’d be saying, “Don’t you think you oughta hit the road?”
She was attending violin making school during that period. One year I joined a local golf course and golfed every single day. The next year I had our dog with me and I spent 2+ hours every day hiking the Indiana Dunes. Both years were pretty good for both of us.
