He’s got the accent. And his foreign features make him stand out of the crowd. Shoot you say to yourself. You really like this guy. But you also know that by the end of the school year, he’s going to fly back to his motherland that is +5,000 miles away. Do you date him?
If you’ve found yourself in this situation, welcome to the world of international dating. It’s great! But it sometimes sucks, depending on the case. Having been there, here’s a story on what it’s like to date an exchange student that will hopefully guide you to proceed or not proceed with your foreign beau.
Around the same time last year, I had started dating this guy, let’s call him…Charles (using a different name for the sake of privacy and whatnot), and thoughts about whether or not I should keep dating swirled through my overthinking mind. We had met four months prior at a bus stop when he and his friend had just finished going shopping for their bedding at a Bed Bath and Beyond. I was headed in the same direction to pick up a plant for my dorm, and when I heard these two guys speaking French to each other, I joined in and introduced myself in French because it was always so rare to find people that I could practice speaking French with in Seattle (I’m originally French Canadian). And that’s when I saw him. It was a pretty casual first interaction, but all of us exchanged information and planned to hang out at a coffee shop (which never actually happened). Fast forward a couple of months, he hit me up on my phone, and I saw him again at my band’s gig where he also performed. Before you know it, we were hanging out on a regular basis.
You Should Have An Idea About The Possible Outcome of the Relationship. And like, Talk About It Early On.
For some people, dating an international student is easy. With the prior knowledge that the other person will be in a different continent, one can rest assured that the casual relationship has an expiration date and will, therefore, decide that there will be no strings attached, nada. Just two people having the time of their lives, and then leaving it at that, which I believe is what usually happens when you’re dating an exchange student. I remember thinking to myself,
“Wait, so should I even date him?”
“He’s leaving…is there a point?”
After about a month or so of dating, I brought up the topic, asking him what exactly we were doing in the general sense of things. He replied, saying that we were young and that he didn’t think we should overthink it. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that because I barely knew him, there wasn’t a point in overthinking it, so I should just go with the flow and let the relationship unfold for itself.
However, when you start to catch those feelings, it can become pretty hard to know that every awesome moment that you share also means that your time together is fleeting. Dating someone that you know is leaving can feel like a whirlwind because it feels as if you’re balancing on a seesaw of trying to live in the moment while also knowing that the other person on the other end could hop at any time and leave you hitting the ground. Hard. Charles and I avoided the topic, and as time went on, I started to fall madly in love with him. And I fell hard.
We were spending so much time together, experiencing new things together, and we learned a lot from each other about different ways of living. We just got along. Granted, Charles was my first boyfriend, so it was also the first time that I was feeling these feelings for anyone, really. This made it extra hard knowing that the first person I had romantic love for was going to fly +5,000 miles away within a couple of months. It was all of the time spent with him, and the feelings that I had for him that made me not want to end what we had.
Even though we didn’t bring up the topic of our expiration date, we had made plans to see each other in Europe for I had a study abroad planned for the upcoming fall quarter after the summertime. Continuing with the mentality of living in the moment, I also became more open to the possibility of a long-distance relationship if things were to go well in the future. The only problem was, I didn’t exactly know how Charles felt. With all of the plans that we had made for the near future, I had assumed that we were both on the same page. I was wrong.
A couple of weeks after I had told him that I loved him right before he hopped on a bus, we were sitting, laughing in a Starbucks when he looked at me and basically said that he didn’t want to do long-distance and that he didn’t want me to feel abandoned. Also, that he felt like he needed to bring it up. While he sat there, telling me this in an awkward fashion, I just sat there across from him as my heart shattered into a million pieces. It hurt when he said that we’ll be over after Europe. Who in their right minds would call someone his girlfriend, but saying that we’ll have to break up in the future? A;LSDKJFLASDKJF was what was going through my mind. I was hurt because I felt like he had taken me for granted. I honestly should have broken up with him right then and there, but I didn’t because I was still in love with him. The next day, we talked it through, and we proceeded to date like normal, knowing what the outcome was going to be like. I tried hard to be okay with it. But I was not. I was just lying to myself.
After I dropped him off at the airport, I was still unsure as to whether or not we were still dating. While we had the plan that I was going to visit him in Switzerland at the end of the summer before my study abroad, we spent our summer confused, lost, and more confused. It was only months prior when he told me that he didn’t want to do long distance, so I was already mentally preparing myself for a breakup when I arrived in Switzerland. We did make plans to see each other a couple of times throughout my time abroad, so the other part of me was still holding on to something to the possibility of us still being together.
In the end, our relationship ended the last day of me visiting Switzerland. He had decided that we shouldn’t see each other for a long time, but it took me bringing it up in order for him to break up with me. Nonetheless, it was an amicable breakup, and I still consider him a friend, even though we don’t really talk. We were just in different places in our lives, and I had always known that you can’t force someone to be with you, so with that, I let him go.
In the end…
Was I glad that I dated someone who lives 5,000 miles away? Well, it was an emotional rollercoaster, but I don’t regret it. I learned so much about myself, and he taught me so much. I later realized that he wasn’t that great for me as I thought he was, and even though we had our problems, he still is a great and amazing person, and I am glad that I had met him and had gotten to know him. Despite geography, every relationship’s future is uncertain. People change and relationships change. Even if Charles didn’t live far away, we would have broken up even without the distance variable.
I could have saved myself a lot of heartbreak if I hadn’t dated Charles. But I also believe that everyone comes into your life for a reason, and teaches you something new. These situations, I believe, are somethings that you can’t really help. It’s up to you to decide, but if I had to pick between the possibility of being heartbroken and living life without any regrets, I would pick the latter.
My relationship with Charles may have ended this way, but I also know plenty of other people who have met their significant others abroad and are still together despite the distance. No matter what happens, you grow and you learn. If you’re contemplating dating someone that lives far away, just go into it without any expectations. But communicate. You never know what’s going to happen. I just recently went abroad and met an amazing special someone and we’re still dating. HA. It looks like I never learn. But that’s a whole other story xxx