The Trials of a Long Distance Relationship

Keep in contact as much as possible. This was one thing that helped kill a past relationship and several others I have seen. Your significant other is worried about you. If your primary source is internet, they’re going to expect to see you online a certain amount. If you’re without web suddenly, try to find another way of keeping in contact! What not to do: Disappearing, sending texts about sleeping in your car (and not replying to anything else), or going off to get drunk and only then spam texting your loved one until they’re in a worried frenzy. Both of those are ones I’ve seen happen or have had happen to me. My significant other at the time once decided, completely out of the blue, that she was going to move out of her house and sleep in her car. Considering her home life, I wasn’t prone to objecting too much. However, when I had only received one text back in a week, I became worried. What had happened to her? Was she alright? After a week, I received a few more messages that were vague and unhelpful, followed by nothingness. The end result in this horrid stream of events was a break up, partially because I was unable to keep contact with her. Keeping in contact is very important...Although clear messaging also helps!

Communication lines need to be open. This isn’t just staying in contact. You need to actually communicate. Talk about what is happening in your day. What is upsetting you? What is making you happy? Keeping yourself closed off to this kind of information makes your loved one feel as if they are unimportant enough not to share in your life. In the example I have given before, this entire mess dissolved into not only not being able to keep track of someone I love (and thus becoming unsure if she was even alive), but being unsure of motives on her end. She had truly gone off the deep end. She would send vague, strange texts about how she was "finding herself" and basically implying that she wanted to abandon every single thing she had worked for so far in her life. This issue sometimes, for me, comes up with my fiancée. It’s never, ever as drastic as anything the previous example was, but sometimes I find myself needing to pester her for information. What’s going on? Are you okay? Why wasn’t I told about this? Nothing bad, of course, but it’s always a very good idea to keep an eye on yourself and how well informed your loved ones are to things, before they suddenly become big things and you have a giant mess on your hands!

Don’t mentally abuse yourself if things aren’t going right. Don’t have the money to fly out and see your loved one? Don’t beat yourself up over it! The job market tends to suck. You might not always have money. This isn’t actually your fault. I myself have literally lost a relationship because I was so hard on myself over my attempts to go see my girl. She couldn’t stand to see someone she loved be so harsh on themselves. Self-esteem can be a very hard thing to work with, but beating yourself up over every single error you make isn’t sexy. Things may come slowly. They certainly do for me and my darling fiancée now. However, the key is to not become discouraged. Keep going and don’t be too hard on yourself. Being in a relationship or even just existing is a very difficult thing. Keep going.

Long distance sexy time isn’t a requirement! I personally have never been very good at doing the sexting thing, or the sexy Skype chat thing. It makes me feel way too awkward. My fiancée has mentioned it a few times and I sort of entertain the idea for a moment, but I can’t manage it. I feel awkward sitting on cam at all, having someone eyeball me, no matter how much I love them. Do you feel awkward by it? Go ahead and just discuss the subject of what you like in sex or what your partner likes in sex instead. Communication is important, like I’ve said before, and you can still feel connected, sexually, with your partner just by communicating what you want over text. And imagine- soon you two will be together and be able to enjoy yourselves!

Take it slow! You may be totally riled up to go the first time you two are able to spend any physical time together, but don’t get so anxious! This is still a relationship, regardless if you’ve spent so much time talking about sex over text or the web. You will never know how you fully interact with someone until you actually spend time with someone. It can totally kill a relationship if you jump into it too quickly, only to find that you don’t quite sync sexually. This has been a problem for me in the past. I was so young and so anxious to jump right into a sexual relationship with someone I’d only ever spoken to online and on the phone. When confronted with it, I suddenly realized how awkward I was with this person. It CAN be worked around, but spend time working with each other, IN PERSON, to see what the other likes! I wasn’t allowed to work around it, sadly, and it only contributed to the mess of problems that wound up screwing that entire thing up.

One of the most important things I’ve learned: Trust each other. I cannot stress this enough with ALL relationships, really. Distrust can cause fights. It can cause break ups. It can cause any number of silly drama scenarios, simply because someone was unable to trust the other and all of their decisions. You should be able to trust them, considering you’re giving your entire heart of them.

Enjoy your relationships! Spend time talking (really talking!) to your loved one! Do anything sexy that makes you feel comfortable, and always be careful!