How To Master a Long Distance Relationship with Your Partner
Are you about to be in a long distance relationship and you’re wondering whether or not they last?
Well, there are so many things that you can do to make sure that your relationship can sustain distance and still stay strong, healthy and bonded.
I’d like to start with a story. There was a couple that I worked with a little while ago and they were a wreck. They were so frustrated with each other, about to end their relationship because distance just felt impossible. They had started out their relationship really in love, and they were just all about each other and thought “we’re a great couple, we don’t have many problems, distance is not going to be a problem for us”.
Unfortunately, when they met the reality of being far apart from each other, they started to struggle. She started saying things like “hey I’ve been trying to reach you, where are you? “ and starting to have some anxious thoughts around why is helot returning my calls as quickly? Why is he not scheduling as many phone dates. Her mind was really running wild with anxiety, then she started making some not so nice accusations about why her partner might not be responding as quickly. Including: “are you more interested in your coworkers?, do you love me anymore?” understandable, but very negative thoughts filling her head, and it was coming out like criticism.
Her partner was really offended by these accusations and was starting to really escalate these fights with counter criticisms. “Are you kidding me? I took this job for us, for our future, im trying to make money”. They were not only offended about the accusations that were being made, but also felt less desiring of calling back. “Like I dont want to call you if you’re going to accuse me of these tings”
It started a really negative feedback cycle where the few times that they would talk, it used to be every day, then every week, the few times that they did talk it resulted in arguments and there were so many thigns that hadn’t yet been resolved and resentments and hurt that it was really making their relationship less fun, less about all the conversation and affection and physical touch that used to be really great part of their relationship when they lived in person.
Once they started living in distance, they were feeling not only the physical distance, but the emotional distance and disconnect. The arguments were not helping, even though they were pretty good communicators at work, and it was actually one of their strengths, they found that in their relationship they were really struggling with “what do I say to you? I dont know what to say to you anymore”. Their relationships were starting to feel really awkward and even though conversation used to flow really well when they lived together in person, when they started living far apart, they found it way less comfortable and they were just clueless and struggling to understand what had happened to their relationship.
So at the urging of a friend, one of them finally reached out to me for couples therapy and we began working on not only repairing some of the damage that had been done, but on creating a new foundation for the relationship so that they could be successful with distance. They really needed to learn some better communication to learn how to repair the damage, to share what they’re struggling with in a non critical non defensive way. And also how to keep that bond alive through some really regular routine scheduled check-ins in the morning, at night. Whether it’s through text or phone calls or face time, they both had to agree what was going to work for their relationship so that they could maintain those sorts of rituals that would make them feel connected.
One of them kind of struggled with the thought of this being to formulaic and structured but once they committed to it and tried it for a week, they had to admit that this actually kind of helps. “I feel closer to you. When we talk about the stupid little things about our day like what I ate for lunch, but also the bigger things like what’s going on int he world and politics, with my work” they were able to feel closer to each other and they were also less likely when they did start to have arguments, they had a lot of good times and conversations to where the fights didn’t really go off the handle as much. Thankfully they were able to recommit to each other and decide with expectations “how long do we want for this distance to be?
Because they hadn’t talked about that in the beginning. That was another thing that I really recommend that you can also do, is to talk about how long is this distance going to be? Are we only going to do this for a year and maybe work towards a down payment? How are we going to celebrate at the end of this? And also more importantly on a day to day, weekly basis how are we going to maintain some rituals for connection so that we still continue to enjoy each other and that we don’t lose sight of why we’re doing this and that? You’re the most important person to me.
Because sometimes with distance you can really start to feel like less of a priority to your partner and vice versa. So recap. If you’re about to be in a long distance relationship, or if you’re already in a long distance relationship, it might be really helpful to revisit why we are doing this? When is this going to end? How do we maintain really healthy lines of communication? And if you struggle with defensiveness and criticism or how to have more fun and play in along distance relationship, couples therapy can really help.
