Don't end up like this long distance girlfriend.
I’ve never started a long distance relationship and made it “the distance”. As many of you begin your summer internships apart from your significant others, I hope that you can learn from my missteps and experience the best that long distance love has to offer—or at least survive the summer as a couple.
Surviving Time Apart
1. Discuss expectations. Before you separate for the summer, take time to have a straightforward discussion about the following:
· whether you are allowed to date other people
· whether you are going to visit one another over the summer
· how often, when, and in what methods you plan to keep in touch
When keeping in touch, I have one tip for the ladies: Straight men do not enjoy talking on the phone for extended periods of time. (I’m not sure that gay men enjoy it either.) No matter how patient and engaged your boyfriend sounds on the phone, he does not want to listen to the juicy details of your day—of the fabulous vintage dress you bought on sale, of the tutorial you almost finished at work, or of the delicious candied walnuts that your cubemate put in her salad. That is what your girl friends are for. Try to keep your phone conversations to 20 minutes or less, and your boyfriend will always be excited to chat with you. You should be out having a great summer rather than curled up in bed on the phone anyway.
2. Make sure your relationship has a strong foundation before you part. Take time to get to really know one another before you have a long time apart. A month of dating is probably not enough time to build a strong relationship before heading your separate ways for the summer. Even if you have dated for several months, any tensions or unresolved issues the two of you had before the separation will only be exacerbated by the challenges of making a long distance relationship work. It’s worth taking the time to go to relationship counseling (which is free at most universities), reading relevant books, and talking honestly with one another about any problems you know are lurking under the surface. They will quickly come bubbling to the top in a long distance relationship—or they will fester over time and pop up as soon as you see one another again. I think this is why so many school-going couples break up during Thanksgiving break. You can only pretend that everything is fine for so long before you have to deal head-on with the issues that complicate your relationship.
3. Live a full life on your own. One of the best things you can do for your long distance relationship is to be a fulfilled, independent person within the relationship. Go out with your workmates and friends, watch your favorite shows, and keep in touch with all your friends who are also spread out across the country. It’s important that the two of you make time to keep in touch, but if you bend over backward to accommodate your significant others’ availability, you will likely carry some resentment into the conversations with you.
4. Try new ways to be intimate. Since you’re far apart, you’re going to have to find special ways to be close to one another. Try sending one another letters through postal mail instead of emails. The handwritten touch and anticipation will add some excitement to what can otherwise turn into a routine that starts to make the relationship feel obligatory. If your partner’s love language is gifts, send them small tokens of your affection. And yes, there is always phone sex—which people actually do and I hear that it helps a lot.
Long distance relationships are difficult no matter which two people comprise the couple. Find ways to strengthen your relationship before and during the time apart to ensure that your love makes it across the chasm of time and distance that destroys so many promising relationships.
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t think straight guys loathe talking on the phone…If you really enjoy each other’s company, that really isn’t a problem. If he’s frustrated talking on the phone, perhaps the relationship is more casual than the girl imagined?
Totally unrelated to the post entry, but all the people on your stock images are umm… (I’m pointing my index finger at my arm and proceeding to move it back and forth as I raise one eyebrow in a knowing fashion while the other eye sort of winks shut)… white.
Carla! I know!!! I actually did a search for “Black woman on phone” to see if I could get some people of color represented, and all the available images were slashed through with copyright signs. I was proud to see people of color protecting their likeness online! However, it means that my blog ends up looking like I don’t get it. Duly noted. I will improve. I refuse to use the excuse, “I just can’t find enough people of color to fill the spot!” I’ll use artistic images if I have to rather than people. And it wasn’t unrelated at all. Keep me honest, girl!
K, you could always use your beautiful self for the pictures
I totally agree with Kaneisha on the fact that guys don’t like talking on the phone too long.This is something I experienced myself,and on top of that I always hear my male friends complaining about their respective girlfriends being too chatty on the phone and making the call cheesy and boring cuz’ they don’t wanna hang up,even when they don’t have anything specific and interesting to say.I think that long phone talks is not their thing,that’s it.Few guys enjoy that:we should respect it and accept it to avoid pissing them off and provoking unnecessary trouble.
This is a great article with some really helpful tips. I do think, however, that it is geared to the college age set and not to folks who are in their 30′s and 40′s and dealing with a relationship that spans continents and may take many months or even a few years before closing the physical distance between the two. Further, as in my case, the relationship didn’t start in real time so I can’t build a solid “real time” foundation like you suggest. All of my relationship has had to be built via internet, phone, text, or web cam with only three weeks out of six months spent in real time. We better have a good thing going beyond just the physical attraction (yeah, we were able to figure that out in 3 weeks of real time) and we better be able to interact for more than 20 minutes at a time and on things of far greater significance than what I did all day. After all, one of us is having to move continents and that’s no small endeavor and it certainly isn’t for the faint of heart.
Good blog and great thoughts though I do believe this post is age specific. Things change drastically after you hit 35. They change even more, for both men and women, after 40. Including, men’s willingness to talk a little longer on the phone in order to further something of far greater value because by that age, they begin to really get it about relationship as opposed to merely sex.
I think you did a really good job with this article. I’m lately figuring out that my boyfriend doesn’t like talking on the phone very long. It’s hard to understand for me since we’re in an extremely long-distance relationship (he’s in CA for graduate school and I’m here in PA til i’m done with undergrad). Normally, our conversations are no more than 10 mintues long and rarely 20 minutes long. All those steps you mentioned my boyfriend and I talked about. When he made the decision to go to UC Berkeley we discussed our expectations of how our relationship will go and ways to cope; though, it did take me nearly five months to come to terms with him leaving for CA. Perhaps, as you mentioned, it’s good that we were together for three years before our already long-distance relationship turned super long-distance. haha. Steps 3 and 4 are equally important for any person in a LDR. If someone can’t handle being independent then the LDR probably won’t work out. Thanks for posting about this.
Hello Wild Mind! I have to say that I’m still learning a lot about long distance relationships (now that I’ve been in one that has lasted for longer than a month). However, I have to say that I don’t think the rules of dating change all that much when you get older. Not that I’ve been there being 25 and all, but I’ve seen women in their 30s and 40s doing the same nonhelpful things women in their 20s do–and men are no different. Just my opinion. Thanks for reading!