When I’m home in Wisconsin, my boyfriend and I share a bed. Throughout the entire night, we maintain physical contact; our feet, heads, thighs, or hips always touch. The comfort of his warmth and skin bring my stress-ridden body to sleep. I share this anecdote from our intimate lives to put into perspective the emptiness I feel for eight months out of the year when I can only be touched by his shirts I’ve taken from home.
My boyfriend and I started dating when we were both 17. We spent the first full year of our relationship in-person as we attended the same high school. I was admitted to McGill University in February of 2020. I quickly accepted the offer. My boyfriend, on the other hand, accepted an offer from a state school in Wisconsin. People whom I barely knew felt entitled to share their opinion on the projected success of my long-distance relationship with my boyfriend. I spent nights pondering the validity of their prophecies for my relationship. Why do long-distance relationships make people so bold and pessimistic?
To be honest, I’m not sure. Many recent surveys have found that long-distance relationships have a comparable success rate to in-person relationships. And while I’ve shed plenty of tears over the distance between my boyfriend and I, I’d be remiss to say that we haven’t learned some valuable lessons.
I feel that the most important lesson that we’ve learned is how to be effective communicators. Long-distance does not leave room for bodily displays of affection, facial cues, or even sometimes verbal tone. One cannot guess their partner’s feelings over the phone. I’ve learned how to be direct about how I feel and how I think negative feelings can be resolved. My boyfriend is open with me about his moods to negate misplaced ill feelings. Though I’ve only brushed the surface of the skills we’ve been forced to learn, we simply could not communicate as well when we were an solely in-person couple.
Long-distance dating also forces one to develop their own interests apart from their partner. My boyfriend has hobbies that keep him happy and busy, and so do I. While we rely on each other as co-partners in relationships do, we also rely on ourselves for determinations of identity. Long-distance gives us a unique balance to allow us to begin defining ourselves as we transition into adulthood.
In all, when my boyfriend eventually live together full time, we will have benefited as well as suffered from long-distance. I tell everyone I meet now that a true test of a relationship is overcoming the challenges of living together and apart. To all our former doubters: just so you know, my boyfriend and I have made it through both.
Information obtained from:
https://nypost.com/2018/10/31/long-distance-relationships-are-more-successful-than-you-think/
https://swnsdigital.com/us/2018/10/long-distance-relationships-have-a-58-success-rate-study-finds/
https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/number-one-reason-long-distance-relationships-end
https://review42.com/uk/resources/average-relationship-length/