How to Survive Long Distance…
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It would be awful of me to do an edition on love and NOT talk about my long distance experience. As someone who has gone through it, I highly do not recommend if you can’t see a future with that person because it is a lot of effort and a lot of work. You need someone who is willing to fight for your relationships as much as you are going to fight for the relationship. It’s not a 50/50 situation. You both have to give 100%. With that said, here are my little tibits:
1. Stick to a schedule for calls
It is important to give each other time to develop a routine. It took me a while with my job in banking to find out how things worked. From there, we decided we wanted to call every night, no matter for how long. Some nights we would call for hours and some nights for a minute. We honored that nightly call and we would step out of the bar, dinner or work to make sure it happened. It seems small but with the distance, this is the little intimate touchpoint you get with the person you love.
2. Figure out how to love from a distance and plan virtual date nights
It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to be loved from a distance. I learned that I have an anxious attachment style which means that I needed a lot of reassurance all the time. David understood that and he would send me a text reminding that he loved me in the middle of the day. Have date nights often. We had date night Sundays and that was OUR time together. Sometimes, we would go to Trader Joes together virtually, pick out the same ingredients and make the same dinner. Sometimes, we would watch a movie. Sometimes, we would plan vacations. Sometimes, we would play little boardgames; we solved a fake mystery murder case together! Take the test here. Figure out what type of attachment style you have!
3. No detail is too small
Your lives are going to be moving in parallel for the next little while. You want to make your significant other feel like he or she is there experiencing everything with you. Tell them if you took a new path to work. Tell them what you had for breakfast. Send them a picture if your outfit. If there is something that reminds you of them, tell them. If you know they are having a tough day, Ubereats them a little surprise. These small details help bring your otherwise parallel lives together.
4. Send audio messages / reduce texting during the day
We actually found reducing texting during the day helped a lot because then we can fully catch-up when we call. Instead we would send audio messages to each other to start and end the day. David would send me a good morning audio before he went to bed since I am 3 hours ahead and will wake up before him. I would then send him a good morning message for when he wakes up.
5. Set a date to work towards
It is easier to get through the distance if you have a date set for when you are going to see each other next. Psychologically it will make you feel like you are fighting towards an end date.
The best advice that I have gotten is from one of my professors at Wharton: “long distance is never the reason why a couple breaks up. Distance just highlights and brings out the problem that the couple would have already had in person”. Good luck!
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