Summary

The website content details the author's experience and insights into maintaining a successful long-distance relationship (LDR) through trust, commitment, and adherence to four golden rules.

Abstract

The author, Christopher Reno Budiman, shares his personal journey of navigating a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend, emphasizing the importance of trust and commitment over the past two years. Despite the challenges, they have managed to stay together by following four key principles: maintaining regular communication, taking care of each other from afar, respecting each other's personal time and space, and practicing conscious awareness to understand each other's needs and expectations without explicit communication. The couple has learned to balance their individual lives with their relationship, proving that LDRs can thrive with the right approach.

Opinions

The author believes that trust and commitment are the cornerstones of a successful LDR.
Daily communication through messages and phone calls is seen as crucial for staying connected and up to date with each other's lives.
Taking care of each other in an LDR involves active listening, responding with care, and making thoughtful gestures, even from a distance.
Personal time and space are essential for both partners to pursue individual interests and maintain a healthy relationship dynamic.
Conscious awareness is about understanding and respecting each other's schedules and life events, which can affect communication patterns.
The author suggests that patience and respect for each other's independence are key to avoiding possessiveness and undue pressure in an LDR.
Gifts and surprises are important expressions of love and care, even when not discussed in advance.
The author is optimistic about the potential for LDRs to succeed and offers inspiration to other LDR couples facing similar challenges.

Long-Distance Relationship: It’s Just a Matter of Distance

Overcoming the most challenging chapter in a relationship.

A lot of people have been asking me “Are you serious? Why you even date your girlfriend when she’s not even here? Do you reckon you can handle Long Distance Relationship? Is it even possible?”

If you are one of the doubters, welcome to the story of my love life.

Long-Distance Relationship (or LDR) is a very common term that we heard for someone that live their love life under a distance. Not being in the same city or country is considered as LDR and they only meet occasionally

There are high numbers of LDR couples around, and as you might know, I am one of them. My girlfriend and I had been dating for over 2 years, we spend most of our times as an LDR couple. We started to date since 2018 and we spend two months together before our LDR. She decided to move to Perth for her job while living with her sister; while I moved to Brisbane to live with my brother.

Since then, we took a short holiday once in around 3–4 months. The longest holiday we spent was in Brisbane for ten days and it was still not enough.

So, for anyone of you wondering, how we are still together for more than two years? For a couple that spends most of their time in an LDR is quite impressive, huh?

Well, there are a few reasons, but three words to sum it up.

Trust and commitment.

Yes, if we didn’t have trust and commitment, I don’t think we can be together until now. We had put our trust and commitment towards a strong relationship through four golden rules, which are:

1. Keeping in touch

The number one rule of maintaining LDR is communication. We always need to communicate every day with messages and phone calls. Every night, we set a dedicated time to talk, telling the story of the day and more things. It’s important to stay up to date with what we have been doing. Otherwise, it’s not going to work. As I’m not physically there, being alert at all times is crucial and we try not to ignore each other.

What about if we’re both very busy? We usually let one another know what we are doing, so both of us doesn’t felt surprised or start panicking. During our calls, we tell each other about our plans for the next day. As we both know, it leads us to the second rule.

2. Taking care

Taking care in an LDR is quite different from the obvious one. We took care of each other remotely by listening to what each other says and respond it with care, especially when girls are in their sensitive week. There’s one day when she was tired and fallen asleep on her sofa, I texted her sister to cover her with a blanket and give her pillow so she can sleep well.

From my side, the question that I always ask her is “What are you doing?”. Even though I still remember her daily plans, but it’s always good to ask that question, so she understands that I do care about her. Even so, try not to ask that question too often, as it may annoy her, which follows up to the third rule.

3. Giving personal time

As I do care for her, I also gave her a personal time. It’s important to give each other personal time and space, even for LDR couples. Clearly we have more time compared to other couples. We both have our plans and we respect it, whether hanging out, cooking, gaming, shopping, working, studying or watching drama (which is her favourite thing).

To be honest, sometimes we all need time to enjoy ourself and interact, other people, which can be your friends, colleagues and families. This will give us a great balance in a relationship. We don’t want to be too possessive to one another since it put pressure in our relationship. Again, trust and commitment are the keys.

4. Conscious awareness

What does conscious awareness mean? Understand and aware of things that people expect from you without being asked.

As an illustration, we need to understand that we are unlikely to reply to text messages in the early morning or late night, or even when we are working. If one of us is in a bad mood, definitely we are not going to make it even worst.

There are different things happening in life that stop us from replying to text messages and phone calls. Be respectful for that and be patient, we don’t bombard with hundreds of calls or messages. Even though without these communications, we know that we always care and love each other.

Another case for conscious awareness plays in gifting which usually, we didn’t tell each other what we’re going to give, but it’s always on the spot and never fails.

So far, we are happy to love and care for each other. Even we experienced lots of ups and downs, we are still next to each other. We hope that it may inspire those LDR fighters out there and people that are still worried about it.

Remember, it’s just a matter of distance!

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