Hey everyone, meet John, my boyfriend! We’ve know each other for 7 years, but have been dating for about 3 years (officially 3 years in March 2019). We started dating Freshman year in college so our relationship started out long distance… which might have made it easier? No, it was still hard. Actually maybe harder because in the beginning stages, it’s hard to build trust when you’re barely with the person. Nonetheless, we made it work. We still haven’t had the experience of having a close distance relationship because I’m still in college, but our time will come!
John and I wanted to make a blog post about the things that worked for us in our long distance relationship. Hopefully some of the things that worked for us works for any of you who are on the same boat.
What do you want? – Commitment
In every relationship, you have to know what you want and if you’re willing to go the extra mile to make your relationship with your significant other work. So, do you like the person enough to make long distance work? I feel like for this one, if you truly have feelings for the other person, commitment shouldn’t be a problem.
Our Experience…
In the beginning, I was actually very hesitant to continue the relationship because I didn’t want to put all of my energy in it just to break up at the end of college. I was scared of heartbreak and I was also bummed that we could barely see each other. Basically, I was pessimistic about distance. John, on the other hand, was very adamant about making our relationship work. He was the stronger and more optimistic one when it came to distance. Obviously, if my feelings weren’t strong for him, we wouldn’t be with each other right now… thankfully he was persuasive, but also I just really liked him.
COMMUNICATION
Communication is the key!! In long distance, sometimes you barely see your S/O. There was one time where I only saw John two times in the span of 3 months. There was also another time when I traveled for eight days and couldn’t speak nor see John the whole eight days. I came back home to some Dear John movie type messages, but nonetheless I communicated with him whenever I could. Communicating is very important when it comes to any relationship. You have to let each other know what’s going on in your life or how you’re feeling.
Our Experience…
As we are college students, there were times where I couldn’t talk to John as much because I was too busy with schoolwork. If you’re S/O truly cares about your education, they should understand that you will not always be available and you have other priorities. You should definitely make your S/O a priority, but you shouldn’t neglect other responsibilities. We both have our studies to focus on and when midterm/project season is here, we can’t just study with each other like some couples who live in the same city. You know? Like if we went to a school in the same city, we would definitely be studying at each others’ houses or going on study dates- he’d be my study buddy!
We always communicated with each other and let each other know how we felt. Sometimes feelings exploded because we (mostly I) bottled things up. We learned that calmly talking things out as they came was way better than blowing up on each other. If we blew up on each other, we ended up saying things we didn’t mean… and you don’t want that to happen. Words hurt.
VISITING EACH OTHER
Make time to visit each other! It’s fun looking forward to a weekend spent with your S/O. I think that’s one of the most fun parts of distance. You have quality time to look forward to and when you’re finally with your person, you’re reminded of the reasons why you’re with them… and why you’re doing distance in the first place.
VALUE TIME TOGETHER
When you’re with each other, value your time. Pay attention to each other. We’re barely on our phone when we’re with each other because we both want to make the best out of our time together with no distractions. John and I also have a rule of not going on our phone when we’re eating out. It’s just a thing we both do because it’s respectful. It’s these little things that help us value our time together.
Distance is worth it with the right person.
