By the time GR moves to Boston this summer, we'll have spent about the same amount of time being a "long-distance couple" as we have a traditional, "I can high-five you at my leisure" couple. Two years apiece. Translated into academic terms, I'll have earned associate's degrees in both regular and long-distance relationships with GR.
In my experience, when you ask your average 'schmo (or your average search engine) what to expect from a long-distance relationship, you get a familiar list of trials and complaints: It's stressful being physically separated, and you're liable to take that stress out on each other, resulting in tension. Jealousy is inevitable. You must remain constantly attentive and vigilant or else you will begin to grow apart. This will probably require you to stoop to doing otherwise unimaginable things, like watching the same TV show while on the phone together, in order to revive the distant memory of intimacy. But if you make it through the 40-days-in-the-desert trial that is the LDR, your relationship will emerge, pressure-refined like a diamond, a stronger and more enduring exemplar of love and mutual respect.
I've come to conclude that GR and I must not be normal people, seeing as our own particular LDR has failed to conform with this stereotype. We've found ourselves experiencing zero flares of jealousy and only a little bit of stress. We remain genuinely interested in each others' lives and impulsively reassure each other of our affection. We've strolled along without noticeable disruption or extraordinary strain since ye old days when we were relationshipping within high-fiving distance.
In fact, I secretly suspect that most couples, given a stable foundation to the relationship, probably don't experience all that much turbulence when they transition into an LDR. All the worry and advice-columning is conceivably spent on a minority population of drama-prone couples who vocalize louder and more often about their arduous distanced relationships while the rest of us plod on boringly. Or perhaps GR and I are simply compatible robots.
My point is, it's not that I don't find long-distance relationships at all annoying -- if anything, I'm actually a bit miffed that the various LDR-related annoyances that I do experience rarely, if ever, appear on any popularized LDR advice websites. My complaints are underrepresented.
Therefore, as a service to non-dramatic coupledom, here is a list of what I, personally, find most irritating about being in a long-distance relationship:
Losing Your Default Social Buddy
After you've been in a relationship for a while, you take for granted that there's someone who's practically contractually obliged to go on stupid excursions with you. If you have the sudden urge to go out to eat, or see a movie, or go on a tour of the Waterworks Museum of Boston to discover the wonders of your city's public works history, you can purchase tickets or make a plan with barely a second thought, because of course your significant other will be happy to accompany you. Once you're geographically adrift in an LDR, it's a bit shocking to suddenly realize that, if you want to go on that tour, your choices are either to go alone or find a friend to go with you. By inviting them. On the phone. And making plans. And hoping they don't say no. Naturally, if you've been single for a while, this process feels second nature. But being in a regular relationship spoils you into expecting the givenness and effortlessness of plan-making between couples.
Visiting Each Other
When you're in a long-distance relationship, visits with your significant other are precious, wonderful, highly anticipated. This is obvious. ...But they also suck just a little bit. One of the great things about being in a stable, regular relationship is the rhythm. You grow accustomed to having the other person in your life in a balanced way -- you do things together one day, you do things apart the next, rinse and repeat. When you're in an LDR, the whole system gets out of whack. You're forced to spend months away from each other, only to then attempt to cram months-worth of quality time into a week's worth of visitation. During your visits, you need to spend every second together having fun, cherishing each others' company, putting your normal lives on hold so you can appreciate this brief oasis of real-life coupledom. Frankly, it's a little stressful. Being in a normal relationship, being proximal on a day-to-day basis, will always be preferable to the bipolar exposure of an LDR.
"What Did You Have for Lunch Today?"
There's an episode of How I Met Your Mother where Lily and Marshall (an over-the-top lovey-dovey couple) are revealed to have a tradition where they tell each other what they ate for lunch every day the second they get home from work. It's an exaggerated nod to the fact that good, caring couples often spend a lot of time sharing random, insignificant details of their lives with each other. In a regular, short-distance relationship, these types of details naturally emerge during the time you spend together: while you're cooking dinner, for example, you chat about work, talk about your commute, mention all those little nuances of life that foster intimacy. In a long-distance relationship, you still desire to know all those silly details about your significant other, but now you have to ask about them on the phone. Deliberately. Every day. Like the visitation thing, it's not a bad thing, but it's a step down from the unselfconscious ease of in-person conversation.
Not Getting to Know Each Others' New Friends
This is just a convenience thing. I love that GR and I have, essentially, all the same friends, because it makes storytelling easier and more interesting. There's an implied history and mutual understanding in every anecdote. As we've been developing new friendships in our respective time zones, we find that we don't know each others' friends equally well, and each of our stories automatically becomes a little more detached and abstract for the other person. And when I gossip, I want him to empathize, dammit.
Being 1,000 Miles Apart
...is a stereotypical complaint, but a completely legit one.
So there you have it. Long-distance relationships are still a bit of a drag, even if you're someone who's remarkably happy in their long-distance relationship. If you need me, I'll be over here, playing my itty-bitty violin.
...But only for another six months.
:)
ReplyDelete