The upside of distance

Making the most of my long-distance relationship

Feb 16

I am no stranger to long-distance relationships. For most of my years studying abroad as a teen, then a young adult, I was in one. Be it by chance or twisted desire, I tended to end up with a boyfriend who lived in a different city or country. And so my earliest romantic relationships took place almost exclusively on WhatsApp and Skype, punctuated by the odd holiday together that usually required a plane ticket and government approval.

Even though I now live in domestic bliss with my partner, our first 31 months were spent apart. I was in Thailand, he in Vietnam. I fell in love not while gazing into his kind brown eyes, but while reading the words he’d painstakingly typed on his tiny phone keyboard. Until I moved to Vietnam, we had rarely spent longer than four days together at a time.

And that was a good thing.

The upside of distance

A lot of people dislike long-distance relationships. And I can see why. When you’re in love with someone, you want to be able to hug them, kiss them, cuddle up next to them, hold their hand, gaze lovingly into their eyes.

I do too, but the 31 months my partner and I spent apart did me far more good than harm. Not in the “absence makes the heart grow fonder” way—I didn’t need the distance to realise I had found my person. But it helped me enter the relationship without becoming reliant on it, as I’d been wont to do in the past.

Whenever I’d had a boyfriend who lived in the same city, I would want to spend all my time with him. I would forget friends and hobbies, neglect my studies. I’d become dependent, his will would become mine, and my life his.

This was, of course, a deeply unhealthy way to carry out relationships, and they would all come to an inevitable end—each separation leaving me adrift—until I found someone new to latch onto, and the cycle would repeat.

Having enforced distance prevented me from merging my life with my partner’s. I had the time and space to build a life in Thailand, change careers, make friends. I missed him and looked forward to our long weekends and rare holidays together, but I kept my identity. I was my own person.

Making the distance work

I owe much to those 31 months of distance in my relationship. If my partner were with me in Bangkok, I would not have had the time or the inclination to invest in so many new friendships in my final years there, friendships that still enrich my life today. I would probably also not have as robust an identity, nor the confidence to start a newsletter and call myself a writer.

But long-distance relationships also require work—effort, discipline, commitment. Every relationship is different, and what worked for me may not work for you. But here are three things that I think made mine work:

Space. You might think the last thing a long-distance relationship needs is space, but I found the opposite to be true. We needed to give each other the space to live our own lives—which meant not expecting instant replies to messages, being comfortable with hours of silence, not demanding to know every little detail of the other person’s life.
Trust. Trust is crucial to any relationship, and even more so for long-distance ones. Without trust, it’s difficult to be comfortable with giving the space a long-distance relationship needs to thrive. I trusted my partner wholeheartedly, which made it easy to give him the space he needed.
A shared future. The most important of the three. If the two people don’t have a concrete plan to move to the same city in the foreseeable future, then there is no future. What sustained me during the year-long Covid-enforced separation from my partner was knowing my move to Vietnam was happening as soon as I could get my paperwork together.

What do you think?

Long-distance relationships work for me, and I’m glad that’s how my relationship with my partner began. My guess is I’m in the minority, but I could be wrong.

Do long-distance relationships work for you?

If you’ve been in one, I’d like to hear your experience. Send a reply, leave a comment, share this with someone whose thought we should hear.