The Reality of Long Distance

I have been in a long distance relationship for close to a year and a half. And recently I've been thinking about how the world sees long distance and what it's actually like. You may think that you understand long distance, but I can assure you, with as much respect that I can muster that you absolutely do not. The only people that understand long distance are the people that have done it. Long distance is in equal parts amazing and awful. There's something about long distance that can't be replicated in any other relationship, especially if you're with the right person.

A long time ago, I was in another long distance relationship, and even though I thought I loved the person I was with, it didn't work. In my mind I had planned out possible routes that our future could head down. The problem? I was the only one thinking about it. Long distance is entirely contingent on both people being on the same page, if you aren't, then I'm sorry to say that you probably won't last very long. At the time, I was still in uni so the prospect of visiting was entirely down to him, but personal circumstances meant that it couldn't happen. It also meant that because of my assignments, our relationship was mostly through text, and a very rare video chat. In the end, the distance was too much. It got too much not knowing when I would actually see him in person, when I would be able to actually go on a traditional date, not knowing when I would be able to do any of the things that I was so desperate to do with him. Ultimately, neither of us was in a position where we could sustain a long distance relationship without a plan. Because we didn't have a plan, and we were just cruising along indefinitely, hoping that we wouldn't hit any speed bumps.

When I broke up with him, I told myself that I didn't want to do long distance again. There was too much sacrifice and not enough to be gained. But more than that, there was a lot of stigma, especially because we'd met online and months after the break up, I discovered that many people in my life hadn't even counted it as a relationship, which was hard to hear because I had believed that they were on board. Whilst they were happy for me, I learned that in their minds, it wasn't a relationship because it wasn't traditional. I didn't agree with them then and I don't agree with them now. A relationship isn't just a relationship because it's traditional. Things like love and relationships move so quickly and definitions change that not one person has the authority to say that this is what it needs to be in order for it to be valid. There is no relationship judge and jury that you need to stand in front of and prove that your relationship is valid. And, it's humiliating to have to prove that your relationship is as good as someone who sees their significant other every other day.

And when I met my current boyfriend? That same stigma and judgement was there ten fold than with my last long distance relationship. My family believed that he was a catfish, that he wasn't who he said he was and though they never said it, I knew that they didn't trust him. Though they had my best interests at heart, by not trusting him, it was an extension of them not trusting me. They had inadvertently told me that they didn't trust me to make my own decisions. My mum used to complain whenever I used to video chat with him and our calls would stretch into the hours, but I think that was because she didn't understand that that was the only time we got to see each other face to face. And being made to feel like I couldn't talk about him was difficult because I had met someone genuinely wonderful, and someone who made me happy and it made me feel like my family weren't willing to share in that happiness.

I've often thought that there's no real difference between knowing someone in real life for a few weeks and starting to date and texting someone for a few weeks and starting to date. The concept is exactly the same, the only difference is that one of them is a traditional way of meeting. And yes, there is a chance that maybe the other person is lying about who they are, but with online dating apps being on the rise, catfishes perhaps aren't as common as they used to be, especially with the internet being even more integral in our lives, we're perhaps more savvy to what the red flags are when we're speaking to someone new.

Because I met my boyfriend online, and perhaps even more so because we met by accident, it's hard to describe my relationship with him to people in my real life. Whenever I mention him to other people at work, they seem to find it difficult to match up an image in their heads that two people can live in two different countries and still date. Usually when I tell them that I'm in a long distance relationship, the first question they ask is where he lives. Then when I tell them, I see the cogs turning in their heads. Then they ask, how did we meet? Did I perhaps go on holiday and meet that way? Was it whilst I was studying? When I tell them we met online, the cogs in their heads pretty much spontaneously combust. They find it very difficult to understand how a relationship like that could possibly work. In fact, a colleague of mine who I hadn't seen in quite some time asked me how my relationship was going and when I told him that we were planning on spending Christmas together and we were even planning on spending New Years Eve away together he looked at me and declared that "we must be getting pretty serious". I would argue that being in a long distance relationship is something that only works if you're serious. In a long distance relationship there isn't room to be indecisive, you have to be committed. There is no reason to assume that people in long distance relationships are somehow less serious, less committed, just less because of how they date their partners.

When you think of long distance, you probably think of grand sweeping gestures, teary reunions in airports, and in a way, that's true. Absolutely nothing beats the butterflies when you're at the airport and looking up eagerly in case the next person through the door is the person you were waiting for. But that's not all it is, and I would be lying if I said that.

It is also an unbelievable amount of planning. Spending a week together requires months of planning and holiday time, accommodation if you don't have a place readily available to stay in, transport to and fro the airport and not to mention things that you want to do together. This was especially true in my case because the first time my boyfriend visited, he had never been in the UK before, so it was a very hectic trip of seeing as many of the landmarks as we could, along with even squeezing in a visit to my family so that my mum could meet him. All of this requires careful planning and time management. That isn't to say that seeing each other is only ever stressful, the opposite in fact. It's the most exciting thing I could think of.

My boyfriend and I often talk about how because we're long distance we appreciate the time we get to spend together more because we know that it's not something we can have whenever we feel like it. But also, being long distance means that you can appreciate being alone, and that is something that to me, is incredibly important in a relationship. Being apart only makes you stronger as a couple, or at least I think so. I spoke about this in my post about solitude but there is comfort in being alone. And that includes being in a relationship. I think in general there's this idea that when you're dating someone, you're basically never alone and that simply isn't true. I don't believe that's a good way to conduct a relationship. You're still individual people, regardless of whether or not you're dating. And long distance is a good way to do that, but that isn't to say that you don't miss each other when you're on opposite ends of an ocean.

I think there's also this idea of long distance being too, I don't know, calculated, I guess? That you can't enjoy normal traditional things, and whilst in a sense that's true, you can't go and see a movie together whenever you want but that doesn't mean that you can't do nice things together or express to each other that you love each other. Long distance doesn't mean callousness. It just means that you have to think of more exciting ways to communicate. My boyfriend and I still managed to have date nights, where we would pick a movie on Netflix and watch it at the same time, and whilst it wasn't the same as actually being able to watch the move together, it was better than nothing, because technology has really come a long way in helping us connect with each other. We could still in a sense spend Valentine's Day together, we sent each other cringe teddy bears and opened them on the day of, and it's these little gestures, these ways of telling each other we care, even though we're far away that just reminds us that we're both committed and that we're both just as love as we were in the beginning.

And when we do get to spend some time together in person? Well, absolutely nothing beats that. It's a sweeter feeling than when you were a kid and you woke up excitedly on Christmas morning so you could tear open your presents. And when I flew out to see him in March for our anniversary, I was so excited. Nervous, but excited. I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and it was agony waiting for my gate to be announced because all I wanted was to be on the plane and to be making my way to him. And the last half hour of the flight, I don't know how I managed to get through it. All I could think about was touching down and getting through customs as quickly as I could manage it just so I could be with him again. Going through customs took forever and I was so impatient because I knew that he was on the other side of the door waiting for him, and I couldn't believe that after three months of waiting, I was mere minutes away from being able to hug him again. That didn't feel real. And yet it was, we had gotten through the months of waiting and now we could be together again, and nothing beats that. And the feeling of knowing that there isn't a screen and an ocean separating you? It's phenomenal.

The first time that he was here in November (which was the first time we had met in person), that first night that we cuddled on the sofa, it felt like I was living some kind of wonderful dream, because I just couldn't believe that after eight months of doing long distance, we were finally together in the same room and we could hold hands, and it was real. I felt complete and whole, in a way that can't quite be replicated when we have to go back home at the end of a visit.

So what can you get away from this? I guess, if it's anything it's to try and view long distance in a different light. It's so much more than failures and arguments, when it works, it can be beautiful and wonderful and so unbelievably fulfilling. When it's portrayed in pop culture, it's shown as something that only will ever fail, but that isn't the case, and it definitely doesn't have to be. I know plenty of people in my life that are in successful long distance relationships. Like everything in life, there's sides to it that can't be seen when you look at it just from surface level.