DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I had previous written to you and you responded to my letter a few weeks ago (“How Do I Stop Wasting My Time Trying to Meet People”, 6/19). A little brief backstory to this post, I have been travelling around on holiday for the past week and I met someone. Yes that stupid corny phrase “It’ll happen when you least expect it” actually worked.
Now here is where the problem comes in. She currently lives in Germany as she is studying for her masters and I live in the States. However, she has a portable career path and is looking at moving to the States at some point.
As you can see between the timeline of my previous posts, I think this is way too early to start thinking that far ahead. But I do really like this girl and want to put in some effort and she wants to give it a try. I had done the LDR thing before, and like most people it didn’t really work out. I do know a couple though where she was from the UK and he was from Nigeria and now they are happily married in the US so I know it is possible.
My question is, how do you long distance relationship? I know not to over expect these things to work out, but how do I at least put forth the honest effort.
Still On The Horse
DEAR STILL ON THE HORSE: I’m not going to lie: long distance relationships are tough. Long distance relationships with an international component can be tougher – especially when there’s an ocean between you and your sweetie as well as international borders.
Part of what makes long-distance relationships harder than more standard relationships is that you quite simply can’t rely on the same sorts of expectations and relationship models that you would expect to have with an in-person connection. You won’t, for example, have access to simple physical intimacy with them. Not sex but things like casual touching, the hand tracing over your back or squeezing your shoulder as they walk by, the weight of their legs on your lap as you both sprawl on the couch. You won’t have the same domestic moments as you both decide to order a pizza and marathon Delicious In Dungeon after a long day at work when you’re both exhausted but still want to see each other. You won’t even have dates the way you would with a partner who lives in the same city or zip code as you.
You also need more of what you would need to make an in-person relationship work, often applied in ways that you might not think about otherwise.
Communication skills make or break a relationship, but this is doubly true in a long-distance relationship when often all you have are your words. Phone calls, texts, DMs and video chats are going to be the primary means of connection for the two of you, and they’re going to be the tool through which you share the majority of your intimate moments. A sexual connection can be maintained, but it’s going to require that the two of you do a lot of talking, a lot of fantasizing and a lot of sharing.
You’re going to need to put a lot of effort and imagination into planning dates and events together because you can’t simply decide to go see a movie or plan a spontaneous dinner out. You’ll have to think so far outside the box that your “dates” may not look like dates to other people. A date for the two of you might need to be things like time together in MMOs, tabletop games via the Internet or movie watch parties via Discord.
You’re also going to need a lot of trust and likely a lot of flexibility in your relationship. It can be particularly hard to maintain an exclusive relationship long-distance, especially one that’s likely to be years-long. Not because someone is inevitably going to cheat, but because your lives are going to be so separated and involving so many people that crushes are going to happen, jealousy is going to happen, longing is going to happen… and you’re not going to have those in-person moments to reassure yourselves or remind yourselves of your connection to one another. The stress and the fear and the anxiety around the expectations of a monogamous commitment and What It* Means is often what kills a long-distance relationship, rather an any actual infidelity. Sometimes simply not having the expectations of a monogamous commitment until you’re in person again can be helpful. When you aren’t worried about being cheated on or your partner leaving, you’re far less likely to round innocent or innocuous behavior up to “danger”, simply because you’re not hypervigilant for “threats” to the relationship.
(*It, in this case, being anything from “she mentioned her cute lab partner a lot this week” to “I haven’t heard from him since I texted last night”)
So if you want this LDR to work, you need to put the effort into communication and connection, to building trust with one another and to not take aspects of this relationship for granted. That time difference and separation, the lack of intersection between your life and hers… these are all going to require that you put a lot of thought into how you conduct this relationship.
One thing that will help is seeing each other as frequently as you can. This does become more complicated seeing as you’re in the US and she’s in Germany. If you haven’t already, I’d start saving up money for trips, getting very familiar with flight price tracking services and getting Global Entry. Now, one benefit of her being German is that she has an easier time traveling through the EU, so it’s possible that the two of you could meet in the middle (as it were) and have romantic trips to Paris or Florence or Vienna if the flights are cheaper than to Berlin. But the more you can see each other in person, the easier it will be to maintain this relationship.
But the most important factor in an LDR – the one thing that can dictate whether a long-distance relationship will last or not – is an end-point. There needs to be a time when this will no longer be long-distance. Having an end date is huge; it’s much easier to white-knuckle through the hard parts when you know you just have to hang on a little longer and you can count down the days. When the entire relationship hangs in limbo? It becomes a lot harder to see the light at the end of the tunnel – and it doesn’t take much before you start to question whether there even is another side to reach. So once this relationship becomes serious – when you know this has long-term legs and you want to take it to the next level – you’re going to want to start talking about when, how and where the two of you are going to reunite for good.
A LDR is high-risk, with a higher than average chance of breaking up. But with the right person? It’s absolutely worth it. You have to decide if you’re willing to roll those dice and if you can do the hard work of keeping this relationship alive and viable.
Good luck.
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Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com