This is a guest blog submitted by sahar.If there's one clichéd statement that brings the same frown on everyone's face, it's the dreaded long-distance relationship.
Whether they're four hours or four thousand miles away, the overall conclusion is that they suck.
I was with a guy who moved to California after only two months of our pseudo-relationship. We were still in the
"honeymoon" period
of the relationship, so we decided to test the waters and see if we
could survive the 3,000 mile distance. I don't know what we were
thinking - we were young and we both knew that there was no way the
relationship could last forever. At that time, though, it was comforting to know that he was mine.
The first couple weeks of our distance were excruciatingly painful. He called me every day, he wrote me e-mails and sent me
presents in the mail. I saved up for months to fly across the country to L.A. (as much as I
hated it) just to be with him. After a couple of months, I became
accustomed to his not being around, he stopped calling as much and the
presents and love letters died down. It was almost as if we weren't in
a relationship at all.
Well, four months turned into eight
months and eventually, we were only in a relationship for the sake of
saying that we were. We only saw each other over breaks when he would
come back to New York and I stopped flying to California. After almost a
year of surviving the three hour time difference, he broke up with me
because he found someone else.
It was the oddest break-up of
my entire life - there were no tears or questions. It was actually
liberating to be released from an obviously unhealthy relationship.
Can long-distance relationships work? Have you
ever been in a long-distance relationship, and if so, how did it work
out for you?
Comments (287)
I'm currently in one, and it's working out pretty well. Only two months in, but we trust eachother. (It's about 900 miles.) I honestly think it depends on the people who are in the LDR. I recall promising myself when I was younger that I would never get into one.. he's just so darn amazing. :P
Boyfriend is currently 7 hours by plane away for the next year. He's been gone for a month and so far we seem to be good. Sure, we've hit a few patches but we would have hit them eventually.
Right now i'm in one of those weied "sortof" relationships...its very strange
I live in West Virginia andthe guy lives in Solihull, England. Holy crap. lol
We talk on AIM as much as we can, and sometimes we use webcams or microphones to communicate, but we've never really made the relationship set in stone.
We've had this thing going for almost a year, we care for each other deeply, but we dont try to hold each other back.
If I find someone over here, close to me, who i'm happy with. He is okay with that, and the same thing goes for Me if HE was to find someone of his interest.
So i'm thinking we've moved beyond the boyfriend girlfriend stage and transcended into a strange family-type love, because all we want for one-another is to be happy, whether it involves us together or not. If its meant to be, It WILL be
I dated a guy for two years, 1,600 miles apart. I was so relieved when it was over.
my boyfriend and I are madly in love. I am in Ohio and he is in West Virginia. It is hard but we are surviving. Soon he will be leaving for the Air Force...Talk about long distance! I am completely confident we will be fine.
ldr can work if you are willing to try and trust and the guy is as well.
I've had my share of LDR, and I'm sick of them. They just don't work at all.
Have been in a few "semi" long distance relationships. One took me like an hour and a half to get to the girl. The other one took like 4 hours... And both of them were pretty darn close to being the best relationships of my life. And now it looks like I might possibly be getting into a 3rd. This ones like 3 states difference however. But I am considering moving to where I she is to finish up school, and I was there checking up on friends and to check out getting my doctorate. So it might not be long distance pretty soon.
I was in one. Relationship of 3 years and long distance for 2 years. There were circumstances around it. First year of long distance he moved away and I was still in school. After a year, he came back home and I just finished school so I moved away. We planned out everything and he was going to move to my city and we would start our lives together. THEN, one day he changed his mind. And that was that. After three years of being together, he just changed his mind. Long distance works when one party seriously commits to moving to the other party's city.
My fiance and I live together now, but we were fairly far apart for a good chunk of time.
We had only been dating a few months when I was staying in Indiana for research and he was doing an internship in Birmingham Alabama. It's about an 8 hour drive one way.
Well, I didn't have a car and Mr. Wonderful drove 8 hours one way every other weekend to be with me for a day and a half.
He graduated early and lived 3 hours from me at school then. He drove every weekend to me.
Now he has the same job and my graduate school is about an hour and a half away from his job. So we bought a house as close to half way between as we could get, and now we just moved in and we get to be together :)
Moral of the story: it's hard, but people can make them work if they really care and want to
I am currently in one now, and while it isn't the most ideal situation, we are still going strong. We were together for a year before my bf graduated and had to move back to Antigua b/c his student visa expired. It has now been another year and he has been back to the States 3 times since he left originally. It really allows you to realize how much you love a person while you are apart, and absence truly can make the heart grow fonder. We talk on the phone quite often and send each other emails. We miss each other like crazy, but that makes the times we are able to share that much more special. We are both living our lives and have both decided we want to go back to school. With any luck he will come back to the States for school again and we can get back together. The one essential thing for a LDR is trust. If you don't have trust and are constantly thinking about what the other person might be doing, it won't work. I'm not sure how mine will pan out, but I love my bf and hope to one day get married!
I'm currently in one right now--and so far it's working out. It isn't the rule, of course, but thanks for this article to help me keep some things in perspective. Every relationship is hard, but long distance is harder; and I think if we have the desire and the commitment, I think this is one long distance relationship that will survive.
i just got outta one...it lastd 2 and a half years...little did i know that he got his ex girfriend pregnant and he was raising one of the twins! never gonna b in a LDR again!
i believe they can work, even though they haven't in the past for me... i'm just a hopeless romantic =p
They can be successful; it just depends on how dedicated both parties are. I was in a long distance relationship but it didn't work out because the guy had a real girlfriend in real life and he had two or three other fake girlfriends online that he was stringing along for the heck of it. I'd never do a long distance relationship ever again. At least not with someone I don't know diddly squat about.
i do believe they can work. i'm 20 years old and i've been in a long distance relationship for over 2 years now and i can honestly say i'm the happiest i've ever been in a long time. i'm not going to lie. at first it was very hard for me. i wasnt used to not seeing him. and then i got used to it and i realized how blessed i am to have someone so nice and sweet to talk to every night. and lucky enough to have someone to miss. however, i definitely dont think they're for everyone. i feel like if you love each other enough and you're mature enough to handle an ldr, it will work out. i'm proof