In going away to college, there are tons of new facets of life that we as collegiettes have to learn to manage. Chief among them, learning how to maintain relationships while being hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles apart. These can include relationships with friends, family, and, of course, significant others. The vast majority of us have known someone – or ourselves have been – involved in a LDR with a person who’s either back at home or studying at a different university. We all know these type of LDRs come with their own struggles. But being in a long-distance relationship with someone involved in the military is an entirely different story.
You read all these articles online about how to cope with a long distance relationship, hoping to find solace in the fact that you’re not the only one who’s missing a S.O. …But for some reason you still can’t relate. Because missing someone who’s away in the military is worlds away from missing someone who’s away at another college. In your case, you have to accept that fact that work comes first. In your case, deployment – to other states, other countries, other continents – is involved. The expression on people’s faces when you reveal that no, your S.O. isn’t back home or at another school – they’ve actually been deployed for X amount of months – is always the same. They look at you with the type of sympathy that one looks at sickly child. And it seems like “How do you do it?” is the reoccurring question that follows you everywhere you go.
Until soon, you find that you too have started asking yourself: How do I do it?
So, how do you do it? Everyone knows that being in an LDR is not easy. In a nutshell, it sucks. That’s not to say that there aren’t any perks to long-distance relationships. There are so many reasons to be grateful for having the experience of being in one really-REALLY long distance relationship. You could write an entirely different piece on how LDRs can be great for you and your S.O. They allow you to build trust. They give you space to be your own person. But sometimes, the bad can really outweigh the good. You can’t even begin to explain how much it SUCKS to be in desperate need of a hug or to hear the soft whisper of an “I love you” come from your significant other, but you can’t get that because: 1) they are quite literally an entire ocean away from you, and 2) they’re asleep, because for them it’s 2 A.M.
And how are you supposed to convey that to other people?
In long-distance military relationships you don’t get the privilege of planning a visit whenever you want the way normal couples do. Leave (or “vacation”) doesn’t always get approved. Plans are made and then flip-flopped in a matter of hours. You get constant communication every day in one week, and then in the next there’s not even enough time for a snapchat. You never know what’s going to happen next, and it can really, truly suck like nothing has ever sucked before.
But yet despite it all, there’s something in you that always remains hopeful. Something deep inside tells you that when the day finally comes that you get to see them again, the suck would have been well worth it.
There’s nothing that compares to the feeling of rushing into your S.O’s arms after not having been able to touch them for over ten months. Nothing comes close to matching the pride that you feel when you see your S.O. standing proud in their uniform. Or when “How do you do it?” Is followed up with, “I have so much respect. I’m rooting for the two of you.”
Because in the end, you know that what you have is real. It’s strong. It’s intimate in a way that others may never understand. And, most importantly, it’s yours. No amount of distance can change that.