When you expect to have a lifetime to be able to love someone, four years apart seems like nothing. I kissed my boyfriend goodbye for the first time last summer, promises were made, sweet nothings were whispered, and I was hopeful. Maybe we didn’t have everything planned out to a T, but I was so sure that he was my person that it didn’t matter to me. In short, rom-coms had deluded me into believing that we would be the one percent that made it.
I thought I knew what I was getting myself into, but, as time would tell, I was sorely unprepared. At the beginning of my freshman year, I was incredibly lonely, I didn’t know how to go out and make friends, and most of the time I preferred staying in my dorm to FaceTime my boyfriend for the night. It took me a while to realize that talking to a boy so far removed from the life I was making on a campus hundreds of miles away didn’t make me feel any less lonely. FaceTime could not make five hundred and eighty-two miles disappear—no matter how much we both wished it could.
As was to be expected, we broke up after fall break, but only to get back together after a week or two. This happened a few more times—breaking up after a few months, but only for a few weeks at a time. It didn’t matter to me how much my friends encouraged me to leave that relationship, it was as if I was addicted to getting my heart broken. I kept going back. I think now that it was out of guilt. I can’t count on one hand how many times I wondered if I was trying hard enough to keep him or even if I was holding him back. It was an overwhelming experience and eventually came to a head when I realized that I was only still in that relationship to say that I had tried. We broke up two months ago, after being together for a year and a half. This time, I didn’t cry over him. I still loved him deeply, but I realized that love is almost never enough to make someone stay.
A love that could stand the test of time is all that a lot of people want and going into a long distance relationship, you have to believe you can have that. I did, and maybe in ten years, he will still be my happy ending, but I had to learn to be okay with the idea that plans change. I won’t say that every long distance relationship is doomed to fail, but if it does, it is okay to appreciate the relationship for what it was: beautiful, passionate, and loving.