Curious About Our Long-Distance Relationship Story?
Yes, long-distance relationships are possible! You can still feel love, despite the lack of hugs.
#1 Our personal story
What happened
A lot changed in the last couple of months for me. I transformed myself from a workaholic dude into a sensitive guy having a long-distance relationship.
I never imagined this happening, I am a practical guy. A practical guy that discovered how to think with his heart and sometimes ignore the voices in his head.
When I fell in love I did not think of some of the details, like the long-distance between us. I just let myself feel, I permitted my emotions to take control and I found out I was happy that way.
In difficult moments, I think of Margaret Atwood’s quote:
“I exist in two places, here and where you are.”
We communicate very well one with another and we do a lot of (online) things together. At first, I considered it to be “a future serious relationship” and not a long-distance relationship.
We are both capable of enjoying small moments together, we talk a lot about everything and we see ourselves on video. It does not feel like something online, but more like a type of love we cannot physically manifest at the moment.
The situation is not ideal, we sometimes have bad moments, but despite this, we get over everything and keep our love alive. But love should be real, not perfect, right?
How everything started
We met at a writing contest. I was a rising star and she was the previous edition’s winner. I followed her work sometimes, I like stalking successful people. This inspires me.
I noticed her interactions with the community and found her behavior to be very smart. She seemed like a nice and ambitious person. I loved the way she communicated and expressed everything. We are both good at expressing feelings, both in writing and speaking.
I love this Yehuda Berg quote on communication:
Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble.
Despite noticing her, I ignored her. We both have magnetic personalities, we easily influence and inspire people, even if we don’t want to achieve this. I was afraid we had too big egos to get along, but I was so wrong…
I am some kind of a role model even when I act random (and this annoys me sometimes). Due to the pandemic, the writing contest was held online and so, our interactions were in the same way.
I am very fortunate that she got into contact with me and moved our public and random discussions in private. I loved the way we talked and laughed together. I felt we have a lot of things in common and we share similar past experiences.
I couldn’t imagine back then that she will become the love of my life. Or that I would travel to a foreign country just to meet with her on a weekend, with all the travel restrictions.
I tried to stop this and just remain friends with her. She did a better job than me at crushing our feelings and stating that our love was impossible.
We had denied the things we felt but after a while, we came clean. We loved each other and expressed our feelings.
How we keep our love alive
Lately, due to the distance and the restrictions, we managed to spend time together one weekend in the last few months.
Despite this, we do a lot of things together and make plans. We both know that these plans can change from one week to another, but we don’t mind that. We have positive mindsets and always adapt.
Since we have common hobbies, we write and work together and use communication and collaborative platforms to do things together. Trello, Google Docs, Canva, TeamViewer, Netflix Party, everything we need to stay connected.
And we always express our feelings and talk to one other about everything.
#2 What we had learned from this experience
A few ideas about long-distance relationships
This kind of relationship can be very difficult at first. If you don’t make things work, everything can shatter into pieces.
As difficult as it may sound, if you feel deep down in your heart that she is the right person for you, things become easier. You will discover what you need to do to make things work.
I like to think that love always wins. If I were to provide you a few practical pieces of advice from our experience, I would say the following:
- Ignore other people’s opinions regarding your relationship and trust your feelings.
- It’s difficult, but the time you spend together will be very intense.
- You will find out that real love doesn’t care about distance. The joy you feel when you see the loved one is one of the strongest feelings ever.
How to make a long-distance relationship work
- Always ask the difficult questions. Don’t avoid asking questions and talking about your feelings. Have sincere discussions and support one another. Communication is very important when you don’t have anything else.
- Make plans together. Make plans for the day you will be able to move together. Discuss your engagement ceremony and what you will do when you will be together. It’s okay if you change the plans weekly.
- Use both audio and video communication platforms and communicate daily. Communicating is very important, it helps you do and feel things together. Don’t ever neglect one another. Just make a common schedule and talk and see each other regularly.
- Do things together. With a positive mindset, the sky is the limit. You can watch movies together by using an app like Netflix Party, you can listen to music on YouTube together, you can work together, you can learn new things together et cetera. Always find ways to spend time together, because this will get you closer. (Crazy) Activities you can do together (or things you can do for the other):
- send flowers
- write love letters
- play computer games together
- blog about your relationship
- sing karaoke together
- have dinner and drink a glass of wine together
- read the same book and exchange opinions
- create a photo album together.
5. Work on projects together. Teamwork gets people close one with another. If you have similar hobbies help each other stay focused. Do this even if you don’t have common interests, learning new things is always fun.
6. Don’t try to control each other. This relationship is based on trust, not control. Don’t become possessive and do not tell the other what he or she has to do, if not asked. Provide support and trust without being invasive.
7. Don’t become jealous and paranoid. I am very serious, these two things are relationship killers. Choose trust instead of control. Allow the other to have the liberty to do things without being suspect of cheating. Establish some rules that make the relationship work from the beginning and respect them. Don’t interrogate your partner as if you were the FBI!!!
8. Always have a positive mindset. See everything that happens as a temporary situation, you will be together and things will change. Think about this, instead of negative things.
9. Exchange objects with your partner, so you can always remember one another. Clothes exchanging is awesome but small objects work too. I have received a kitten keyring and I always look at it when I am sad or miss my partner.
10. Talk kinky. This will make things a little harder, but will also increase the passion.
11. Share your schedule. It is very important to know the other’s timetable. This will help you communicate in suitable moments and will avoid a lot of problems, like overtalking to your partner when he’s busy or at work or staying awake late at night if he or she has to get up early in the morning.
12. Follow one another on social media. Since you spend a lot of time communicating online, you should embrace these platforms. This will help you keep in touch with your partner and will provide joyful moments.
13. Stay strong and ignore other people’s opinions! Everybody will try to discourage you, from family to friends. People tend to deny others’ difficult things and have the feeling they know better. Don’t listen to them and don’t feel discouraged.
We are Anaphielle and Ryan and this is our love story so far. I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments.