…..A post about my four-year on-and-off again long-distance relationship. I am a private person when it comes to my dating life, unless you are a friend or someone I trust or would look to for advice. However, I see this topic surfacing more and more recently among people I am close with. I did it – for a long time, and I will be the first to tell you it isn’t fucking easy. BUT I also believe that couples who can do a LDR do form a closer bond with one another because it honestly comes down to how much you trust the other person, how deep your bond and love for one another is, and overall, look, it’s not too hard to just go find someone else but clearly if you’re giving distance a try, just to stay with one another, there obviously is something important and unlike anyone else that you see in that person.
It helps if you see an end to the distance, I think my ex and my biggest issue was both of us were too stubborn and set in our ways to move for the other. I have my family in the U.S. and he has a very successful job in the U.K. When it came down the wire and he agreed he would move for me, I couldn’t let him. It was strange, I loved this person so much that I could not allow him to leave his brothers and sisters and his amazing career to move here and see what would happen. I guess my anxieties got the best of me as well because all I could think of is how horrible I would feel if he changed his life for me and it didn’t work out. I still have enormous love in my heart for him even though we do not speak, to this day I would say he is still the most amazing man I have met. He was extremely kind, polite, funny and an honest to god English gentleman – and let me tell you I’m a skeptic so if I’ll admit it, it’s true.
Looking back on the relationship it was crazy the amount of effort we both put into the relationship and the planning. Sadly, I will admit tho, being long distance the way that we were felt as though I was only “half-living” my life. I went from living in the same one bedroom flat, to a completely different country than him. Nothing in my relationship was even comparable to my friends relationships. I could not bring my boyfriend to parties unless he happened to be visiting at that time, when I got into a car accident, he couldn’t show up at the hospital, and when I would get mean in drunk texts he couldn’t try to make things better until the next day when I would wake up, sober up, and see his missed phone calls. I know some people think if long distance relationships are so hard why the hell did I hold onto one for so long. The answer for me was simple tho, not only was he my best friend and who I was determined was the love of my life but from the minute I met him to our final break up it was like a fucking fairy tale and i believe it’s what has turned me into a “romantic.”
Warning: super cheesy TMI story ahead:
So back in January 2014 I moved to London for a semester abroad to go to school and work in an Internship at a mental health facility. The day I moved in I remember first seeing Elliot passing out flyers for a pub crawl; he was a club promoter and our RA for the building. I remember looking at him and thinking his face looked so familiar but not speaking to him because I was hungover as fuck and just felt bitchy in general. Elliot was one of like three English guys in our building so I already knew he probably just hooked up with a bunch of American girls every semester and I totally wrote him off as a fuckboy LOL. It wasn’t until the next month when we were all out at a club for a mutual friends birthday that him and I even spoke. He was drunk and came on to me, “why haven’t I ever seen you before, why haven’t we gone out?” And of course because back then I was my current feisty self only times 100 I responded, “because I’ve been avoiding your ass.” Which he didn’t like. I then was convinced he was going to plant drugs in my room and get me kicked out of our flat building.
Luckily, he didn’t. Instead he tried to plan one of my best friends birthday party, which he later told me was to try and get closer to me. He got a bunch of my friends and myself into a club with bottle service, a table, everything that people who like going to clubs like. (disclaimer: I hate clubs. We only went to so many that year because as promoters we were paid to do so – YAS.) I got wasted and stole a cardboard cutout of a woman in the lobby of our flat. It was that night he and I started “talking” which eventually developed into him taking me on a date to the London aquarium and us seriously dating soon after.
Ready for the rediculous annoying fairy tale part that I roll my eyes at now but honestly made me feel like mush at the time? On my birthday he took me on the London eye and gave me a necklace (it didn’t matter what it was but if you’re wondering it was Tiffany) then we went to dinner on the Thames and I’m sure he did a bunch of other amazing shit for me but this was the most memorable. Yes I hate heights. Yes, I had a panic attack on the London eye. It’s okay it built character for our relationship and definitely added to the story. I was supposed to leave London in May but overstayed my visa, for almost two months we traveled and then stayed at his place until i had customs legit tell me that i needed to leave the country in 7 days. The moral to this story is Elliot was a real gentleman, he was kind and an ACTUAL good person not one who just tries to look or act like one so other people think he is or to make himself look good. He was so hard-working and driven, I admire everything about him. But this post isn’t supposed to be about how great he was. It’s supposed to be about what it was like in a LDR.
i already mentioned being in a long distance relationship – to me at least – feels like you’re only half-living Your life. I was constantly counting down the days until one of us would be visiting the other. And now looking back I’m like how the fuck did we afford all these trips. Every 3 months one of us would fly to the other or we would fly to a new country to explore together. It was cool seeing so many places together and having so many experiences but it took some strange adjusting every time we first met up. The first 2-3 days felt strange, even though we FaceTimed everyday and were dating and living in a small room with one bed together for 5 months. It honestly felt like seeing an old friend or someone who wasn’t the person I was talking to everyday. Long story short it was weird as fuck. Even though we knew every detail about each other’s lives and friends and jobs and school it wasn’t like we were there for it. It was sad. I’m not saying all LDRs are sad or have to be sad but the way ours played out just was.
We broke up sometime in the Summer of 2016 and ended up getting back together less than a year later when I was on my grand Euro-Trip with my friends Zack and Carson. It was so amazing to see each other again and we realized we still loved one another. But, sadly, time and distance still was not in our favor and we ended up breaking up again later that year. As I write this post we have been broken up over a year and have not spoken in that time. I do not know anything going on in his life at the moment, and even though I will always care about him and wish him the best I do not mind. I believe that we had this amazing, difficult, intense relationship and yes, it has ended, but I need to leave it that way. I understand my post may not have helped ease any anxieties any readers who are newly in a LDR may have so I will sum it up in 3 things for you.
- Have an end goal in mind. Someone who is moving, when you will actually be together, whatever.
- Facetime, skype, send each other letters and packages. Try to be as involved in each others day-to-day lives as possible.
- Have things to talk about. Watch the same movies or read the same books, do whatever so that you two can bond and have more to talk about than what happened at work every day.
Alright, that’s all I have got for the moment, I will update this post when I have more advice or things to say. Hopefully, it is not as depressing of a post as I feel it is haha. ALSO, if I have any friends who are in a LDR and need advice or someone to talk to… I’m always here.
Runaway Blond 