I started doing long distance this August. I remember when people would first ask me about it. They were never questions as I expected—I thought maybe they would ask how much we were going to visit or how I was feeling about it, but it was always asking if we were planning to break up at the end of the summer or if I was going to miss out on the “college experience” because of long distance. Anyone far removed from our relationship never really understood why it would be worth it, and for a while, I started to question my decision. Long distance hadn’t even started yet but I was questioning my relationship and whether our connection was strong enough to withstand the distance.Â
Long distance is a challenge many college students face. It can be a hard transition from a high school relationship to navigating college and maturing separately from your partner. College is already a difficult change. You are living on your own, probably farther away from home, meeting new people, and learning who you are individually. I remember it was hard to initially balance school and maintain a long distance relationship. In many ways, long distance is more intensive and requires more attention than seeing each other regularly.Â
Communication becomes a vital role in long distance relationships. My boyfriend and I Facetime two to three times a day, but in the beginning, it was hard to make time for each other, and mostly difficult to find times when we could give our undivided attention to our relationship. This caused many small fights in the beginning of long distances and at first these conflicts were very scary. Fighting with your significant other is never seen as a positive thing. However, as we matured in our relationship and learned some of the nuances of long distance, talking through problems and how we feel has become an important part of our relationship.Â
Long distance has also given me the opportunity to grow and thrive individually. I have never been a very balanced person but it’s something I’m always working on. I knew going to college would help me to thrive and learn more about myself but I never thought it would help me learn how to become a better person and partner in a relationship. Long distance takes endless patience, willingness to communicate, and eagerness to learn more about your significant other, no matter how far away you are.Â
Before long distance, I was a pretty good girlfriend. I did all the things I thought I was supposed to do—the typical girlfriend things—but I don’t think I understood at the time the role a partner has in your life. I was in love with my boyfriend even before we started long distance, but I’ve fallen more in love and our connection has become deeper as long distance has forced us to truly understand each other from a distance: how we communicate our feelings, when we have problems and how we still show each other love from a distance. In the days and weeks leading up to long distance, we said, “Distance makes the heart grow fonder” more as just hopeful thinking or a common quote that fit our situation, but I don’t think I thought at the time that this could be true. It was hard to understand without experiencing long distance yet how being apart from each other could make our relationship better rather than solely harder.Â
As much as I have grown and learned about myself and relationships, long distance is hard. Even though my boyfriend is relatively close and I’m lucky he is just a drive away, there are still days that feel like we are hundreds of miles apart. There are still hard emotional days that drain me and those days that we feel so disconnected and emotionally far from each other. It’s hard on those days to not get discouraged and feel like long distance will never work. At the beginning of long distance, those feelings were crippling to our days and especially when we hadn’t learned yet how to communicate with each other in this chapter of our relationship.
It took a while to learn that I wasn’t fighting or upset with my boyfriend, just mad at long distance. Many situations are bound to happen in college and I had to learn that I truly wasn’t upset at him, but at the fact I wasn’t there and felt removed from his life. I felt this for a long time. I hadn’t been to the college where my boyfriend goes, I hadn’t seen his dorm or his life at college and that was difficult to adjust to. During long distance, you are constantly hearing about the other’s day or life, but without a picture, it’s hard to not feel removed from their new life. My first visit to his school was eye-opening and relieving to see the life he had been living away from me. I found so much comfort in seeing the life he had created at school and the ways that I could still fit into it from a distance.Â
Long distance will always be hard, but I’m learning that the right person makes it worth it.