By Kaitlin Kitchens
Being in a relationship is a beautiful thing. You have a boyfriend. You have a best friend. You have a date for every meal. You don’t have to wear makeup to class anymore. You have someone to laugh with. You have someone to kiss. You have someone to love. You have someone that loves you. You’re in your perfect world with your perfect guy.
Now I could sit here and lie to you and pretend that my past relationship was the example relationship, but I won’t do that. We fought, and we had our ups and downs, but at the end of the day, he was still my number one. We were both willing to look past our imperfections and our mistakes because we loved each other, and that was what mattered.
So the question is, what went wrong? Nothing was going wrong. Well, I mean we’d had a few fights here and there over car directions or who stole the covers, but nothing enough to pull us apart. He was my everything. I was his everything. It was a fairy tale.
But then the news came. I was moving three states away, eight and a half hours away. Now many of you could laugh and say that’s not that far; I mean people in the military are much farther away than that right? There are planes, and trains, and cars and I’d walk to him if I had no other way. In the heat of the moment, I was willing to do anything. I was going to use all my money I earned this upcoming summer and spend it on plane tickets. Distance was just a minor bump in the road.
We ended it. We ended our beautiful, magical love story. The relationship I thought could take any battle wounds died. It was over in a blink of an eye. I was going home, and he was staying here. Distance destroyed us before it even started. So if we were both so in love, why didn’t we take the risk, the chance that we might actually be “the ones” for each other?
I have multiple friends doing the long-distance battle, and it’s a battle enough to watch them do it. I know someone who has cheated on his girlfriend countless times and another who has made out with more guys than I have fingers. I have listened to my friend fight with her boyfriend too many times about going out for a drink or two. I’ve listen to him too many times call her names I couldn’t imagine calling a significant other.
I’m not trying to say every long distance relationship fails, because we’ve all seen those sappy army love stories. But what I am saying is it is a tough battle that comes with a lot of unnecessary drama and arguments. My past relationship had too many positives to allow it to potentially have so many negatives in the future. We ended our relationship to save our relationship. Tears were shed and hearts were broken, but he’s now my best friend and not some ex that I hate. We might not have had the perfect love story, and it might not have been the longest-lasting love story. But it was our love story. And as that cliché quote goes, “If it’s meant to be, I’ll see you down the road.”