Is long-distance dating commonplace now? Since when did the boy next door turn into the boy across the country? Is it technology connecting people who would have maybe never met? Are people willing to go the distance to avoid settling like past generations? Are more people attending college than ever and thus falling in love with someone who may call home another town, state, country? I found myself single and free my freshman year only to be entering sophomore year locked in with a boy who lives 590 miles away. Making it work is a learning process. An extra course to my college schedule. A course more college students seem to take every year. Here’s the syllabus:
Plan how often you’ll see each other beforehand, and don’t make it more than a few months at a time.
- Having an end date for a long-distance relationship is what everyone says is ideal, but sometimes that end date is more looming than exciting if it’s far away. I suggest having a conversation about how long you will be apart as well as how often you will visit each other, with a maximum of how long you are willing to go in-between visits. A general outline of the relationship. It makes it a lot less intimidating to be in a long-distance relationship when you know you will be together at least once a month or once every two months. I would suggest the maximum of being apart about 2 months because there seems to be a strong unavoidable disconnect that many people speak about after going longer than that timeline with no physical visit. Then you could fall victim to bickering and taking out every little problem on each other. When you miss someone that much, you can accidentally take out your frustration of being apart onto each other. Of course this isn’t an exact science but it is a conclusion I have found through trial and error. Hypothesis being: How long can I go without seeing my boyfriend before we both go crazy?
Live the single life.
- College is fun, and just because your partner isn’t there physically with you doesn’t mean you need to be put on pause. Go out with your friends if you want to. Meet new people if you want to. Stay in and drink all the wine while watching Sex and the City if you want to. Go to the gym if you want to. Fill up your time with anything you want to. Do whatever you want. Being in a relationship doesn’t strip you of your identity. Your partner should be an extra bonus to your life. Meaning, your life without your partner physically being there should be full and busy and happy. This is pretty much the only time you can be selfish, so be selfish. It’s called me time!! What other chance do you have the opportunity to have no focus on boys?? You aren’t looking for a hookup or partner because you have one, but you also don’t have to invest the same amount of hours into your partner as couples who aren’t long distance have to. Invest that time into yourself. Do everything you can to be happy while your happiness is living somewhere far away.
Go on date nights.
- Here is the secret: date night actually requires more effort when you are not physically together. First schedule time in your week not just for a quick FaceTime catch-up call but for an official date. Then come up with ideas of dates you could do over the phone. And finally go on the date! Monday night at 8 P.M. you’ll find my boyfriend and I in bed watching The Bachelor and eating Netflix & Chill’d ice cream. Not in the same bed of course but one in Tennessee and one in South Carolina. Only being connected in-between drama-filled clips when we call each other during commercial breaks to express our shock on who did and didn’t get a rose. That is our date night and we love it! Maybe you don’t like The Bachelor or ice cream, in which case there’s other options. You can make dinner on FaceTime together, get dressed up to order in from the same restaurant, or even FaceTime while going on a hot girl walk together. While the list of virtual date night options isn’t endless, it’s definitely long. Date night is a time to nurture your relationship and partner while purely focusing on each other so don’t forget about it!!
Send each other photo updates.
- You’ve seen the Tik Toks of people posting all the funny, random out of context photos they send back and forth over text message in their relationship. I have to say my boyfriend and I do the same, especially on nights out. It’s a way to keep your partner in the loop and included in your day/night. Whenever our song comes on in the car, my boyfriend always sends a picture of it playing to me. If we buy our favorite ice cream flavor, we send a picture at the grocery store. If I bump into his friends when I’m out, we always send a selfie. At football games, we send each other pictures of the field and the bar. We send our ootd’s. It’s different from posting publicly. It’s that unspoken message that you want that one person to see what you are seeing, and not just your entire list of followers. It’s the little nudge of reassurance everyone craves in a long-distance relationship. A picture is worth a thousand words and these random pictures say “I was thinking of you during my busy day at this exact moment”.
Long-distance is hard. Any relationship is hard. Every visit isn’t going to be perfect. Actually, probably none of your visits to each other are going to be perfect. Long-distance relationships have a sneaky habit of putting the pressure of the world on themselves. Fighting (every once in a while) is normal in relationships. Flaking (every once in a while) is normal in relationships. And if those two things happen to occur in person during a visit, that’s okay. The whole reason you are in this long-distance relationship is that you want to be with this one person instead of everyone else, and that means not quitting when things don’t go perfectly. The good thing about when things aren’t going well in a long-distance relationship is you have all the space in the world to remember each reason you fell in love in the first place. Because the truth is, distance makes the heart grow fonder.