On Distance

Even though I wrote most of this a month or two ago, I’m posting it today because he’s been here for one month today, and we live together, and I don’t have to be patient or miss him anymore!

Before transitioning to a long-distance relationship, it’s easy to talk about how difficult it will be. It’s not a particularly useful conversation – nothing’s going to make it easy, and you can’t really predict how it will be – but nevertheless important to acknowledge and try to prepare for. But then you kiss and you hold hands and they’re still right there with you. So what if it’s going to be hard?

But long-distance isn’t messing around. It hurts and makes it difficult to focus on what you’re supposed to be doing – the pretext for the distance in the first place. For me, that was finishing my master’s degree and doing an internship. Over the 7 months we lived in different states (and then different countries), I felt everything from distracted, sad, lonely, and even jealous of his coworkers just because they got to see him on a daily basis. And then sometimes I’d get annoyed that all of that was messing with an otherwise great internship. It’s not a cute-romantic struggle, it’s real and fucking difficult.

Overall we did amazing. Not without any issues, sometimes little things that could’ve been solved with just a hug became bigger issues, only because the hug wasn’t possible. Here’s some of what helped and somethings that really didn’t.

What helped

• Even though we’re not the selfie-taking types (me even less than him), we did it anyway, a lot. Long-distance means missing out on things like what they are wearing that day. Not every day, but many days, we’d send each other cheesy bathroom-mirror selfies. I didn’t love taking them, but I loved receiving them from him, and I just had to remind myself that he felt the same way about receiving them from me.
• He did a triathlon in June (!), and part of training for that was getting up between 5:15-5:45am, depending on the day, to go to the pool before work. But getting up at 5:15-5:45am sucks and he was understandably struggling with that. So I started calling him every morning to wake him up. When I was in the same timezone, I’d set my alarm, call him, and go back to sleep after he’d gotten up to go. When I moved to the East Coast, it was a little easier for me because 5:15 for him was 8:15 for me. So I’d call him from the office each morning. It helped him keep his training schedule consistently, and I think made his mornings a little nicer. And no matter what else happened later in the day, if he or I had other plans in the evening, we had this morning call every day. I loved doing that for him, being a part of his routine there and part of helping him get ready for the triathlon.
• Whenever we did see each other, I took lots of little videos of him. Talking, dancing in the car, playing guitar, asking me why I was taking a video of him (I have lots of those). I was doing it because it gave me these little moments to replay later when we weren’t together. Not performances or anything important, not anything anyone else would care to see, just these little interactions that I missed so much from daily life with him. I watched these videos a lot.
• I don’t remember where I read this, but somewhere I saw that when you’re living far apart, there’s no such thing as “too much”. Too much texting, too much calling, too many pictures. You’re living apart, so it’s going to be difficult to reach the level of interaction that you would have living together. Sure you need to respect that they are doing things, their schedule doesn’t match yours, they might not be able to respond. But if you want to and you’re thinking of them, just text them. I reminded myself of this sometimes when I felt like maybe I should lay off. Looking back, I don’t think we ever approached “too much” and it’s important for the other person to know that they’re still on your mind, even when they’re not physically there.

What didn’t help

• People are generally pretty sympathetic when they hear you’re in a long-distance relationship. Lots of people have their own experiences to share, either of successes to encourage you, or failures to admire you. But there was one reaction I got more than a couple times, and although it is not intended to be belittling or dismissive, that’s how it feels. It goes something like… “I did long distance before. How long have you lived apart? Oh that’s not that bad!” Or… “How often do you get to see each other? Oh that’s lucky!” That’s not that bad. Ok, I get that maybe you did longer, or you had to go longer between visits. But let’s just agree long-distance sucks, no matter that duration.
• A few weeks after I left California, Topi flew to Seattle to surprise me. It was an amazing, perfect surprise. But unfortunately and unavoidably, it was harder after he left. From that point forward, I had a version of Seattle with him in it. That’s where we ate breakfast. That’s the park where we sat and watched the people and the water and the skyline. We got gas at that gas station. Sound silly, but it was always in the back of my mind as I walked around Seattle. When you leave for the first time, it’s sad, but there’s excitement too (about wherever you’re going, not about leaving). Saying goodbye and being apart after the first visit is much harder.
• Sometimes I got upset about something unnecessarily, or overthought something. I’m usually pretty rational, and I try to not let my mind run off unnecessarily, but it happened a few times. Anyway, I didn’t want to seem crazy to him, so I would try to not tell him and just act cool. Bad choice. He pretty much always could tell something was up, and the more I tried to brush it off, the bigger deal the whole thing became. Definitely just tell them, because usually whatever silly little thing happened (in real life or in your mind) can be resolved pretty much immediately, if you just talk about it.

So we did it! 7 months of waiting very very very impatiently to go grocery shopping with him, do laundry, daily routine things that are all ridiculously more fun with him.

Thank all the thankable things that long-distance is done now!